GHSA-rwgm-f83r-v3qj

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GHSA-rwgm-f83r-v3qj

Summary: Improper Certificate Validation in WP-CLI framework

Details: ### Impact An improper error handling in HTTPS requests management in WP-CLI version 0.12.0 and later allows remote attackers able to intercept the communication to remotely disable the certificate verification on WP-CLI side, gaining full control over the communication content, including the ability to impersonate update servers and push malicious updates towards WordPress instances controlled by the vulnerable WP-CLI agent, or push malicious updates toward WP-CLI itself. ### Patches The vulnerability stems from the fact that the default behavior of `WP_CLI\Utils\http_request()` when encountering a TLS handshake error is to disable certificate validation and retry the same request. The default behavior has been changed with version 2.5.0 of WP-CLI and the `wp-cli/wp-cli` framework (via https://github.com/wp-cli/wp-cli/pull/5523) so that the `WP_CLI\Utils\http_request()` method accepts an `$insecure` option that is `false` by default and consequently that a TLS handshake failure is a hard error by default. This new default is a breaking change and ripples through to all consumers of `WP_CLI\Utils\http_request()`, including those in separate WP-CLI bundled or third-party packages. https://github.com/wp-cli/wp-cli/pull/5523 has also added an `--insecure` flag to the `cli update` command to counter this breaking change. Subsequent PRs on the command repositories have added an `--insecure` flag to the appropriate commands on the following repositories to counter the breaking change: * https://github.com/wp-cli/config-command/pull/128 * https://github.com/wp-cli/core-command/pull/186 * https://github.com/wp-cli/extension-command/pull/287 * https://github.com/wp-cli/checksum-command/pull/86 * https://github.com/wp-cli/package-command/pull/138 ### Workarounds There is no direct workaround for the default insecure behavior of `wp-cli/wp-cli` versions before 2.5.0. The workaround for dealing with the breaking change in the commands directly affected by the new secure default behavior is to add the `--insecure` flag to manually opt-in to the previous insecure behavior. ### References * [CWE: Improper Certificate Validation](https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/295.html) ### For more information If you have any questions or comments about this advisory: * Join the `#cli` channel in the [WordPress.org Slack](https://make.wordpress.org/chat/) to ask questions or provide feedback.

References: https://github.com/wp-cli/wp-cli/security/advisories/GHSA-rwgm-f83r-v3qj, https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2021-29504, https://github.com/wp-cli/checksum-command/pull/86, https://github.com/wp-cli/config-command/pull/128, https://github.com/wp-cli/core-command/pull/186, https://github.com/wp-cli/extension-command/pull/287, https://github.com/wp-cli/package-command/pull/138, https://github.com/wp-cli/wp-cli/pull/5523, https://github.com/FriendsOfPHP/security-advisories/blob/master/wp-cli/wp-cli/CVE-2021-29504.yaml