Vulnerability report

Exploited in the wild High confidence Not in CISA KEV

CVE-2020-35948

XCloner Backup and Restore Remote Code Execution

Watchful.li / XCloner Backup and Restore

Watch CVE-2020-35948 Browse KEV feed
Severity
CVSS 9.9 · Critical
Confidence
High
Exploit status
Exploited in the wild
EPSS
24.9%
First observed
—
Last observed
—

Decision summary

What security teams need to know first

Direct answers before the deeper technical record.

What it is

CVE-2020-35948 is a vulnerability affecting Watchful.li XCloner Backup and Restore. An issue was discovered in the XCloner Backup and Restore plugin before 4.2.13 for WordPress. It gave authenticated attackers the...

Is it exploited?

Yes. Previdian tracks this CVE as a known exploited vulnerability. Confidence is high. Also confirmed by third-party sources.

Who is affected?

Watchful.li / XCloner Backup and Restore.

What should we do?

Prioritize remediation. Validate affected assets and apply vendor fixes on an accelerated timeline.

Overview

An issue was discovered in the XCloner Backup and Restore plugin before 4.2.13 for WordPress

An issue was discovered in the XCloner Backup and Restore plugin before 4.2.13 for WordPress. It gave authenticated attackers the ability to modify arbitrary files, including PHP files. Doing so would allow an attacker to achieve remote code execution.

The xcloner_restore.php write_file_action could overwrite wp-config.php, for example. Alternatively, an attacker could create an exploit chain to obtain a database dump.

Published
01 Jan 2021
Exploitation Reported
22 Sep 2020
Attack vector
Remote
Complexity
Low
Privileges
Low
User interaction
None

Tags

php wordpress

CVE References

Exploitation evidence

Why Previdian marks this CVE as exploited

Third-party attestation and first-party sensor observation are shown separately so teams can judge the evidence chain.

Exploited in the wild

Wordfence

Recorded 22 Sep 2020

A trusted third party reported exploitation.

Known exploited vulnerability sources

Per-source evidence links for KEV attestations are available through the Previdian Pro API.

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Source Added
Wordfence First 2020-09-22 13:28 UTC

Detection

Operational artifacts and observed signals

Make the evidence actionable in scanner, SOC, and edge-control workflows.

Observed signals

Request targets
User-Agents
Callback hosts
0
0
0

Request targets and User-Agents available in Pro. Callback host details available in Enterprise.

Scanner coverage

No scanner integrations recorded yet.

Virtual patch status

No Previdian virtual patch is currently available. Future rules ship for ModSecurity, Cloudflare, and AWS WAF.

Learn about virtual patches →

No detection artifacts or sensor request patterns are available for this CVE yet.

Check back as sensor telemetry and scanner integrations are updated.

Risk and context

Severity, weaknesses, and research context

CVSS v3.1

9.9 Critical

Potential damage if exploited. Separate from whether attackers are using it.

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H

EPSS

24.9%

Estimated chance of exploitation in the next 30 days. Previdian's warning comes from evidence, not this score.

Weaknesses

Incorrect Authorization CWE-863

All CVSS Scores

CVSS v3.1 9.9 Critical

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H

CVSS v2.0 6.5 Medium

AV:N/AC:L/Au:S/C:P/I:P/A:P

Timeline

From disclosure to observed exploitation

  1. 03:27 UTC

    CVE published

    Vulnerability disclosed publicly

  2. 00:00 UTC

    CVE ID reserved

    Identifier reserved by the CNA

  3. 13:28 UTC

    Added to Previdian KEV Feed

    High-confidence, third-party attested exploitation

Pro API

Automate this intelligence

Confidence, exploit status, sensor telemetry, PoCs, scanner integrations, mentions, and tags are available programmatically for VM, SOC, and CTI workflows.

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  • Evidence confidence and provenance
  • First-party sensor telemetry
  • PoC and scanner references
  • Affected versions and enrichment
  • Automation-ready JSON delivery

GET /api/v2/pro/kevs/CVE-2020-35948

Sample API response 
{
  "cve_id": "CVE-2020-35948",
  "confidence": "High",
  "cvss_score": 9.9,
  "cvss_estimated": false,
  "epss_score": 0.24937,
  "exploit_status": {
    "exploited_in_the_wild": true,
    "active_exploitation_observed": false
  },
  "sensor_telemetry": { "attempts": 0, "sensors": 0 }
}