Import / Export Customizer Settings <= 1.0.3 - Cross-Site Request Forgery Bypass
Strategic Overview
- Status
- Patched in 1.0.4
- Affected Plugin
- Import / Export Customizer Settings
- Affected Version
< 1.0.4- CVSS
- 4.3Medium
- Weakness type
- CWE-352 · Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
- CVE
CVE-2020-36737
At a glance
CVE-2020-36737 is a medium-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the Import / Export Customizer Settings WordPress plugin, affecting versions < 1.0.4. It carries a CVSS score of 4.3 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 1.0.4; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed September 2020, reported by Jerome Bruandet.
Vulnerability Overview
The Import / Export Customizer Settings plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Cross-Site Request Forgery in versions up to, and including, 1.0.3. This is due to missing or incorrect nonce validation on the astra_admin_errors() function. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to display an import status via a forged request granted they can trick a site administrator into performing an action such as clicking on a link.
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.
CWE-352: Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
Import / Export Customizer Settings < 1.0.4 carries this weakness at astra_admin_errors(), and reaching it 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 Import / Export Customizer Settings the fix is 1.0.4: builds < 1.0.4 are affected, anything from 1.0.4 onward is not.
Remediation
Update to version 1.0.4, or a newer patched version
How does WordSec protect against this?
The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Import / Export Customizer Settings: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Import / Export Customizer Settings 1.0.4 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.
- Firewall
- Alerts
External References
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