CVE-2014-5204

WordPress Core < 3.9.2 - Cross-Site Request Forgery Protection Bypass

2014-08-06 00:00

Strategic Overview

Status: Patched in 3.7.4
Affected Core: WordPress 3.9
Affected Version: 3.7 – 3.9.1 · 4 branches
CVSS: 8.8High
Weakness type: CWE-352 · Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
CVE: CVE-2014-5204

At a glance

CVE-2014-5204 is a high-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the WordPress 3.9 WordPress release line, affecting 3.7 – 3.9.1 · 4 branches. It carries a CVSS score of 8.8 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity; high confidentiality, integrity, availability impact). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 3.7.4; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed August 2014, reported by David Tomaschik.

Vulnerability Overview

wp-includes/pluggable.php in WordPress before 3.9.2 rejects invalid CSRF nonces with a different timing depending on which characters in the nonce are incorrect, which makes it easier for remote attackers to bypass a CSRF protection mechanism via a brute-force attack.

Technical Analysis

The vector marks this flaw as remotely reachable over the network, with low attack complexity — no special timing or configuration is needed, and no privileges on the target site. A successful exploit has high impact on confidentiality, integrity, availability — full site compromise territory.

CWE-352: Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)

Reaching this weakness in WordPress 3.9 3.7 – 3.9.1 · 4 branches takes a caller who can reach the endpoint. Cross-site request forgery abuses the fact that browsers attach a victim's cookies to any request, so a state-changing action that only checks who you are, not whether you meant to act, can be triggered from another site.

An attacker who gets a logged-in user to load a crafted page can perform that action as them, with the impact scaling to whatever the victim's role is allowed to do. For WordPress 3.9 the fix is 3.7.4: builds 3.7 – 3.9.1 · 4 branches are affected, anything from 3.7.4 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to one of the following versions, or a newer patched version: 3.7.4, 3.8.4, 3.9.2

How does WordSec protect against this?

The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to WordPress 3.9: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: updating to 3.7.4 is the step that ends it.

Firewall
Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2014-5204 https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/3bdb73f9-d091-4de7-975c-10090ee1f749 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2014-5204

Related records

Same weakness class

Other vulnerabilities in WordPress 3.9

CVSS Vector

8.8

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

Base

Attack VectorNetwork
Attack ComplexityLow
Privileges RequiredNone
User InteractionRequired
ScopeUnchanged
ConfidentialityHigh
IntegrityHigh
AvailabilityHigh

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