Critical Vulnerability in the File Manager plugin for WordPress and how to fix it

A critical security vulnerability in the popular File Manager plugin for WordPress that affects over a million websites has been discovered and fixed. The vulnerability is rated 8.1 out of 10 for severity and could theoretically allow unauthenticated attackers to gain access to sensitive information, including data stored in site backups.

"The product does not use sufficiently random numbers or values ​​in a security context that relies on unpredictable numbers. When the product generates predictable values ​​in a context that requires unpredictability, an attacker can guess the next value that will be generated and use that guess to impersonate another user or access sensitive information."

🚀 The vulnerability is due to a weakness in the backup filename generation algorithm used by the File Manager plugin. The algorithm combines the timestamp with a four-digit random number, but this amount of randomness is insufficient to prevent attackers from successfully guessing filenames, ultimately allowing attackers to access backup files in configurations where there is no .htaccess file blocking access.

• 📌 The vulnerability was found in all versions up to and including 7.2.1 and was fixed in the latest plugin update with the release of version 7.2.2.