CVE-2014-9033

WordPress Core < 4.0.1 - Cross-Site Request Forgery to Authentication Takeover

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-2014-9033

At a glance

CVE-2014-9033 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.

Vulnerability Overview

Cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in wp-login.php in WordPress 3.7.4, 3.8.4, 3.9.2, and 4.0 allows remote attackers to hijack the authentication of arbitrary users for requests that reset passwords.

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-2014-9033 https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/b7cc5b51-5fb4-470b-8d2d-581eceadde7b https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2014-9033

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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