CVE-2008-1930

Severity: high (CVSS 7.5 v2.0)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 5.0% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2008-04-28 · updated 2026-06-16
Weakness: CWE-287

Description

The cookie authentication method in WordPress 2.5 relies on a hash of a concatenated string containing USERNAME and EXPIRY_TIME, which allows remote attackers to forge cookies by registering a username that results in the same concatenated string, as demonstrated by registering usernames beginning with "admin" to obtain administrator privileges, aka a "cryptographic splicing" issue. NOTE: this vulnerability exists because of an incomplete fix for CVE-2007-6013.

Affected products

WordPress: 2.5

References

http://secunia.com/advisories/29965
http://wordpress.org/development/2008/04/wordpress-251/
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/sjm217/advisories/wordpress-cookie-integrity.txt
http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/491356/100/0/threaded
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/28935
http://www.securitytracker.com/id?1019923
http://www.vupen.com/english/advisories/2008/1372/references
https://exchange.xforce.ibmcloud.com/vulnerabilities/42027
http://secunia.com/advisories/29965
http://wordpress.org/development/2008/04/wordpress-251/
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/sjm217/advisories/wordpress-cookie-integrity.txt
http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/491356/100/0/threaded

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