Robots.txt optimization <= 1.4.5 - Cross Site Request Forgery
Strategic Overview
- Status
- Patched in 1.4.6
- Affected Plugin
- Better Robots.txt – AI-Ready Crawl Control & Bot Governance
- Affected Version
<= 1.4.5- CVSS
- 5.4Medium
- Weakness type
- CWE-352 · Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
- CVE
CVE-2023-25706
At a glance
CVE-2023-25706 is a medium-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the Better Robots.txt WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 1.4.5. It carries a CVSS score of 5.4 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 1.4.6; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed February 2023, reported by Abdi Pranata.
Vulnerability Overview
The Robots.txt optimization plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Cross-Site Request Forgery in versions up to, and including, 1.4.5. This is due to missing nonce validation on the page function. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to modify the settings for the plugin, granted they can trick a site administrator into performing an action such as clicking on a link. The impact of this vulnerability is unknown.
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)
Reaching this weakness in Better Robots.txt <= 1.4.5 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 Better Robots.txt the fix is 1.4.6: builds <= 1.4.5 are affected, anything from 1.4.6 onward is not.
Remediation
Update to version 1.4.6, or a newer patched version
How does WordSec protect against this?
The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Better Robots.txt: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Better Robots.txt 1.4.6 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.
- Firewall
- Alerts
External References
Related records
Other vulnerabilities in Better Robots.txt – AI-Ready Crawl Control & Bot Governance
Vulnerability data © Defiant, Inc., provided under the Wordfence Intelligence T&C