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Blackhole for Bad Bots <= 3.3.1 — Arbitrary IP Address Blocking via IP Spoofing

CVE-2022-1165Published · Updated

Action summary

Affected: <3.3.2Update to 3.3.2 or newer

All remediation steps
Watch plugin
Severity
Critical9.1
CVSS
9.1
CVSS 3.1 · CNA (Wordfence)
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:H
What does this vector mean?
AV:N Attack vector
Network
AC:L Attack complexity
Low
PR:N Privileges required
None
UI:N User interaction
None
S:U Scope
Unchanged
C:N Confidentiality
None
I:H Integrity
High
A:H Availability
High
Weakness
CWE-639 Authorization Bypass Through User-Controlled Key
Required access
No account needed
Exploit prediction (EPSS)
No score
CISA KEV
Not listed
On this page8

Am I affected?

Blackhole for Bad Bots blackhole-bad-bots

  1. Affected< 3.3.2
  2. Patched in3.3.2

Update to 3.3.2 or newer.

You are affected if you run < 3.3.2. Version 3.3.2 and later are not affected by this issue.

  • Check your version: in wp-admin go to Plugins → Installed Plugins and read the version under Blackhole for Bad Bots.
  • No admin access? Run a passive check of your site. It reads public files only.
  • No account is needed to exploit this. Treat any exposed site on an affected version as at risk.

What to do

  1. Update to version 3.3.2, or a newer patched version
  2. Rotate administrator passwords and application secrets if the site ran a vulnerable version while publicly reachable.
  3. Watch Blackhole for Bad Bots to get an email when the next vulnerability is published.

Advisory

Source description from Wordfence Intelligence, credited to Daniel Ruf.

The Blackhole for Bad Bots WordPress plugin before 3.3.2 uses headers such as CF-CONNECTING-IP, CLIENT-IP etc to determine the IP address of requests hitting the blackhole URL, which allows them to be spoofed. This could result in blocking arbitrary IP addresses, such as legitimate/good search engine crawlers / bots. This could also be abused by competitors to cause damage related to visibility in search engines, can be used to bypass arbitrary blocks caused by this plugin, block any visitor or even the administrator and even more.

Exploits & references

Proof-of-concept & detection

No public proof-of-concept or detection template is known for this vulnerability.

Advisories & patches

More in Blackhole for Bad Bots

All 2
More vulnerabilities in Blackhole for Bad Bots
SeverityVulnerabilityCVEPublished
High7.2Unauthenticated Stored Cross-Site Scripting via User-Agent HTTP Header
≤3.8Update to 3.8.1
CVE-2026-4329

Timeline

  1. CVE published

    Severity critical, CVSS 9.1

  2. Record last updated

Sources & licenses

Wordfence record
Vulnerability data
Wordfence Intelligence. Copyright 2012-2026 Defiant Inc. Licensed under the CC BY-SA 4.0.
CVE® identifiers
Copyright 1999-2026 The MITRE Corporation. Used under the CVE Program. CVE® is a registered trademark of The MITRE Corporation.
CVSS / CWE
National Vulnerability Database (NVD), shown unmodified. This product uses the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD.
VulnCrest content
Summary, remediation guidance and page layout © VulnCrest. Not sourced from NVD.

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