CVE-2022-21662

WordPress Core < 5.8.3 - Authenticated (Author+) Stored Cross Site Scripting

2022-01-06 00:00
Simon Scannell

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 3.7.37
Affected Core
WordPress 5.8
Affected Version
3.7 – < 5.8.3 · 22 branches
CVSS
8.0High
Weakness type
CWE-79 · Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
CVE
CVE-2022-21662
View all WordPress 5.8 vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2022-21662 is a high-severity Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in the WordPress 5.8 WordPress release line, affecting 3.7 – < 5.8.3 · 22 branches. It carries a CVSS score of 8.0 (reachable over the network; high confidentiality, integrity, availability impact). Exploitation requires an authenticated account at Author level or above. The issue is fixed in version 3.7.37; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed January 2022, reported by Simon Scannell.

Vulnerability Overview

WordPress is a free and open-source content management system written in PHP and paired with a MariaDB database. Low-privileged authenticated users (like author) in WordPress core are able to execute JavaScript/perform stored XSS attack, which can affect high-privileged users. This has been patched in WordPress version 5.8.3. Older affected versions are also fixed via security release, that go back till 3.7.37. We strongly recommend that you keep auto-updates enabled. There are no known workarounds for this issue.

Technical Analysis

The vector marks this flaw as remotely reachable over the network. A successful exploit has high impact on confidentiality, integrity, availability — full site compromise territory.

CWE-79: Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')

Reaching this weakness in WordPress 5.8 3.7 – < 5.8.3 · 22 branches takes an account at Author level or above. Cross-site scripting happens when input from a request is written into a page without being escaped for the context it lands in, so the browser parses attacker-supplied text as markup or script.

Injected script runs with the privileges of whoever views the affected page, which is how these flaws turn into administrator session theft, silent account creation or persistent backdoors in page content. For WordPress 5.8 the fix is 3.7.37: builds 3.7 – < 5.8.3 · 22 branches are affected, anything from 3.7.37 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to one of the following versions, or a newer patched version: 3.7.37, 3.8.37, 3.9.35, 4.0.34, 4.1.34, 4.2.31, 4.3.27, 4.4.26, 4.5.25, 4.6.22, 4.7.22, 4.8.18, 4.9.19, 5.0.15, 5.1.12, 5.2.14, 5.3.11, 5.4.9, 5.5.8, 5.6.7, 5.7.5, 5.8.3

How does WordSec protect against this?

An attacker needs Author access first, so the firewall sees the attempt as traffic from a logged-in account: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: updating to 3.7.37 is the step that ends it.

  • Firewall
  • Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2022-21662https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/c272f769-65da-4963-aff0-8f68a277ea63https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-21662

Related records

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