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A vulnerability has recently been disclosed that affects WordPress 2.8.3 and allows the admin user to be locked out of their account by changing the password. This post on Full Disclosure details the flaw, and includes relevant code snippets. The post mentions that 'You can abuse the password reset function, and bypass the first step and then reset the admin password by submiting an array to the $key variable.' I'd be interested in someone familiar with PHP explaining the bug in more detail. Those affected should update to a new 2.8.4 release which apparently fixes the flaw. wp-login.php: ...[snip].... line 186: function reset_password($key) { global $wpdb; $key = preg_replace('/[^a-z0-9]/i', '', $key); if ( empty( $key ) ) return new WP_Error('invalid_key', __('Invalid key')); $user = $wpdb->get_row($wpdb->prepare("SELECT * FROM $wpdb->users WHERE user_activation_key = %s", $key)); if ( empty( $user ) ) return new WP_Error('invalid_key', __('Invalid key')); ...[snip].... line 276: $action = isset($_REQUEST['action']) ? $_REQUEST['action'] : 'login'; $errors = new WP_Error(); if ( isset($_GET['key']) ) $action = 'resetpass'; // validate action so as to default to the login screen if ( !in_array($action, array('logout', 'lostpassword', 'retrievepassword', 'resetpass', 'rp', 'register', 'login')) && false === has_filter('login_form_' . $action) ) $action = 'login'; ...[snip].... line 370: break; case 'resetpass' : case 'rp' : $errors = reset_password($_GET['key']); if ( ! is_wp_error($errors) ) { wp_redirect('wp-login.php?checkemail=newpass'); exit(); } wp_redirect('wp-login.php?action=lostpassword&error=invalidkey

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