Ask old password to change user password

[nprasath002]

I have experienced this in various sites and i think
it adds extra security.
We must ask for the old password when the user tries to change the password

[tman4506]

Replying to nprasath002:

I have experienced this in various sites and i think
it adds extra security.
We must ask for the old password when the user tries to change the

I I think it's a great idea. I'll work on it no guarantees though

[azaozz]

+1

[bootsz]

Adds "Current Password" field to the profile & user-edit pages.

[iandunn]

+1

This was initially rejected in #4444, but I still think it's a good idea.

Most authentication systems employ this feature. Otherwise, an attacker could just walk up to a laptop while the owner isn't looking and change the password. It's easy to implement and doesn't place an unreasonable burden on the user.

One of of the reasons it was rejected was that "Someone with such access could install a backdoor, create a new user, or do any number of other things to engineer future access", but that assumes the current user is an Admin. They could be an Editor or other role.

Looks like the patch needs to be refreshed (and generated from / instead of /wp-admin).

[azaozz]

Thinking more about this: when users change their own passwords typing the old password is more or less expected and adds some security.

That's not the case when an admin is changing another user's password. The current patch also requires the admin to know the user's current password to be able to change it. That's not acceptable.

[iandunn]

Yup, I just noticed that too. I'm working on a refresh that allows admins to change it without knowing the current one.

[iandunn]

20140.2.diff refreshes the original patch, and allows admins to change other users' passwords without having to know what the current one is.

[DrewAPicture]

Replying to iandunn:

20140.2.diff refreshes the original patch, and allows admins to change other users' passwords without having to know what the current one is.

Shouldn't we check whether that user can be edited by the current user rather than saying only administrators can change a user's password?

[iandunn]

Shouldn't we check whether that user can be edited by the current user rather than saying only administrators can change a user's password?

The patch doesn't actually change any of the behavior related to capabilities; I just wasn't being precise when I said "administrators". The patch uses IS_PROFILE_PAGE to determine whether or not the extra field should be generated and validated, so if there's a custom role that can edit users then it shouldn't be affected at all.

[nacin]

I could go for this. 20140.3.diff​ is a clean-up.

I guarantee it'll take only a few days for us to receive a security report that states an administrator can simply create a new user, then log in as that user to change the first administrator's password. At the same time, though, that obviously could already happen.

This is designed for better user security for sub-administrator roles. Which is good, because they're commonly being used in attacks.

I'm going to put this on the agenda for Wednesday's meeting. Marking for commit (dev-wise) pending feedback as to whether we want this.

[travisnorthcutt]

+1

[iandunn]

xref: ​http://irclogs.wordpress.org/chanlog.php?channel=wordpress-dev&day=2013-09-25&sort=asc#m696129

TL;DR: Instead of putting it in 3.7 as-in, we should look at expanding the scope and adding some extra protections for 3.8.

[bundleplan]

Thanks for this ticket! Is there any way to make this work for a frontend page? I currently have a theme that allows users to change password by a user profile in the front end but after a few days of trying, I can't get it to work (I don't know much code).

I can add the form for current pass no problem, but I just don't know how to modify both codes together, the closest I got was I changed the password, but not to anything I had put in the blanks.
Any tutorials on this?

Also another thing, can you make it so users cannot change other details, such as email address, without entering current password? I think it just adds more security is all, thanks again!

[miss_jwo]

Hi,

Is there any movement on this ticket?

This is coming up in ethical hacking reports as one of the ways to harden WordPress & therefore would be great if it was in core so that it is no longer an issue with ethical hacking reports.

[stephenharris]

As already mentioned that there are some difficulties in implementing this in a meaningful way. An attacker who gains access to an admin account could do any of the following (even if this ticket is resolved):

1. Create a new user with admin capabilities
2. Change the e-mail address and use WordPress' 'forgot password?' feature
3. Access the plug-in /theme editor and do all sort of nefarious things.

(3) is a special case in my opinion. There seems to be little appetite to remove it from core, so if a site admin decides not to disable it, then they are accepting the security risk it entails. The only solution would be to password protect those pages also which would be awkward to implement.

Leaving (3) aside, I think if this ticket were to be resolved (and I hope it would be), then we need to either password-protect the change of e-mail address or send a confirmation e-mail to the current e-mail address. Preferably giving the user a choice.

Additionally a password should be required when creating a user / changing a user's role / changing a user's password (that is the password of the user making the changes, not the user affected by the changes).

This may seem like a bit of a feature creep - but if this is to be implemented at all, we'd need to cover all bases. (Some interesting thoughts by Eric Mann related to this ticket .here: ​http://ttmm.io/tech/sudo-in-wordpress/).

I'd love to hear back from someone on the core team as to what the opinion on this ticket is. Is it a definite no-go? If not, would it be reasonabily considered if it were developed as a 'feature plug-in'? Are there any immediate blockers a developer of said plug-in should be aware of? ;)

[johnbillion]

A feature plugin would be an excellent way of beginning to address this.

[miss_jwo]

​https://github.com/humanmade/hm-require-password something I had to build for a client.

If anyone wants to use it, feel free.

[stephenharris]

Thanks Jenny, your plug-in served as an inspiration for this: ​https://github.com/stephenharris/password-confirm-action

The above password protects creating a new user, or editing the role/e-mail/password of a user. It uses a modal which appears after submitting the form provided it needs password confirmation (There's a non-js fallback).

Any help with this (even if its just using it & reporting problems) would be very much welcome. I'm hoping to put this forward as 'feature as plug-in' in the next release cycle. For those wishing to contribute code, unassigned issues are up for grabs ;)

[iandunn]

Reopening because I think this is still a useful enhancement.

[swissspidy]

#60702 was marked as a duplicate.

[dpknauss]

This is still a useful enhancement to limit the potential harm of a hijacked user session, but to fully eliminate that type of threat it would need to be applied to both user password and email address changes, as well as any new user account creation, like @stephenharris's plugin: ​https://wordpress.org/plugins/password-confirm-action/

Ideally, the privileged actions that trigger the challenge should terminate the current user session and require reauthentication to complete.

As Stephen's plugin notes, an Administrator with arbitrary upload/install/activate/deactivate privileges can bypass all of these (and any) defenses. Requiring reauthentication to perform upload/install/activate/deactivate/delete actions would adequately defend against hijacked Administrator sessions.

Since 2021, stolen session cookies from compromised user devices have become the most common effective attack (exceeding plugin vulnerabilities) on WordPress sites, so this old feature request has become even more relevant as a way to limit the potential damage.