What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2022-2434: String Locator <= 2.5.0 - Cross-Site Request Forgery to PHAR Deserialization

• Severity: high (CVSS 8.8 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 1.6% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2022-09-06 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-502

Description

The String Locator plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to deserialization of untrusted input via the 'string-locator-path' parameter in versions up to, and including 2.5.0. This makes it possible for unauthenticated users to call files using a PHAR wrapper, granted they can trick a site administrator into performing an action such as clicking on a link, that will deserialize and call arbitrary PHP Objects that can be used to perform a variety of malicious actions granted a POP chain is also present. It also requires that the attacker is successful in uploading a file with the serialized payload.

Affected products

• instawp String locator: through 2.5.0

References

• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/string-locator/trunk/editor.php#L59
• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset?sfp_email=&sfph_mail=&reponame=&old=2759486%40string-locator&new=2759486%40string-locator&sfp_email=&sfph_mail=
• https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/10a36e37-4188-403f-9b17-d7e79b8b8a6d?source=cve
• https://www.wordfence.com/vulnerability-advisories/#CVE-2022-2434
• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/string-locator/trunk/editor.php#L59
• https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset?sfp_email=&sfph_mail=&reponame=&old=2759486%40string-locator&new=2759486%40string-locator&sfp_email=&sfph_mail=
• https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/10a36e37-4188-403f-9b17-d7e79b8b8a6d?source=cve
• https://www.wordfence.com/vulnerability-advisories/#CVE-2022-2434

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