A PHP Object injection vulnerability was found in the Simple Ads Manager WordPress plugin. The unauthenticated PHP Object injection vulnerability can be used by an unautenthicated user to instantiate arbitrary PHP Objects. This issue can potentially result in arbitrary code execution, but this has not been confirmed.
For feedback or questions about this advisory mail us at sumofpwn at securify.nl
This issue has been found during the Summer of Pwnage hacker event, running from July 1-29. A community summer event in which a large group of security bughunters (worldwide) collaborate in a month of security research on Open Source Software (WordPress this time). For fun. The event is hosted by Securify in Amsterdam.
OVE-20160712-0041
This issue was succesfully tested on the Simple Ads Manager WordPress plugin version 2.9.8.125.
There is currently no fix available.
The Simple Ads Manager WordPress Plugin is an easy to use plugin providing a flexible logic of displaying advertisements. A PHP Object injection vulnerability was found in Simple Ads Manager WordPress plugin. The unauthenticated PHP Object injection vulnerability can be used by an unautenthicated user to instantiate arbitrary PHP Objects.
This issue is possible due to two unsafe calls to unserialize() in the sam-ajax-loader.php file. The input is taken directly from the POST request as can be seen in the following code fragment:
sam-ajax-loader.php:
if ( in_array( $action, $allowed_actions ) ) {
switch ( $action ) {
case 'sam_ajax_load_place':
echo json_encode( array( 'success' => false, 'error' => 'Deprecated...' ) );
break;
case 'sam_ajax_load_ads':
if ( ( isset( $_POST['ads'] ) && is_array( $_POST['ads'] ) ) && isset( $_POST['wc'] ) ) {
$clauses = unserialize( base64_decode( $_POST['wc'] ) );
This issue can potentially result in arbitrary code execution, but this has not been confirmed.