CVE-2020-11738 — Duplicator
HIGHCVE-2020-11738 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) Path Traversal vulnerability in awesomemotive duplicator. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2021-11-03) — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. A fix is available — see the affected versions and patch details below.
The Snap Creek Duplicator plugin before 1.3.28 for WordPress (and Duplicator Pro before 3.8.7.1) allows Directory Traversal via ../ in the file parameter to duplicator_download or duplicator_init.
Exploitation Status
Actively exploited in the wild
- Confirmed by CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2021-11-03. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2022-05-03.
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA (KEV catalog and SSVC triage) for CVE-2020-11738.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2020-11738 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). In the shaded patch-first corner (EPSS 50%+, CVSS 7.0+).
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 394,803 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the ≥ 90% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Description
The Snap Creek Duplicator plugin before 1.3.28 for WordPress (and Duplicator Pro before 3.8.7.1) allows Directory Traversal via ../ in the file parameter to duplicator_download or duplicator_init.
Affected Products
duplicatorawesomemotiveResearch use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Wordpress Plugin Duplicator 1.3.26 - Unauthenticated Arbitrary File Read
by nam3lum · Oct 18, 2021
Detection & mitigation playbook
Vendor / applianceDetect
Inventory every awesomemotive duplicator deployment and check each version against the affected-products list above.
Fix
Apply the awesomemotive duplicator security patch or hotfix for CVE-2020-11738 on the affected version, following the vendor advisory for your exact build.
Workarounds
Resolve every user-supplied path to its canonical form and reject anything that escapes the intended directory, and run the component under an account that has no read or write access outside the directory it legitimately serves. Alongside that, restrict the management interface to trusted networks and apply the vendor's recommended configuration mitigations.
How to detect CVE-2020-11738
A community-maintained Nuclei template exists for this CVE. You can scan for it directly:
nuclei -id cve-2020-11738 -u https://target- Template
- WordPress Duplicator 1.3.24 & 1.3.26 - Local File Inclusion
- Severity
- high
- Impact
- Successful exploitation of this vulnerability can lead to unauthorized access to sensitive files, remote code execution, and potential compromise of the entire WordPress installation.
- Remediation
- Update the WordPress Duplicator plugin to the latest version (1.3.27 or higher) to mitigate the vulnerability.
Template by ProjectDiscovery nuclei-templates (dwisiswant0), MIT licensed. View the full template. Scan only systems you are authorised to test.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2020-11738 being exploited in your environment?
Detect and block the exploit chain at execution, on systems you cannot patch yet.