CVE-2013-4944

BuddyPress Extended Friendship Request < 1.0.2 - Cross-Site Scripting

2013-07-03 00:00
Charlie Eriksen

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 1.0.2
Affected Version
< 1.0.2
CVSS
6.1Medium
Weakness type
CWE-79 · Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
CVE
CVE-2013-4944
View all BuddyPress Extended Friendship Request vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2013-4944 is a medium-severity Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in the BuddyPress Extended Friendship Request WordPress plugin, affecting versions < 1.0.2. It carries a CVSS score of 6.1 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 1.0.2; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed July 2013, reported by Charlie Eriksen.

Vulnerability Overview

Cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in the BuddyPress Extended Friendship Request plugin before 1.0.2 for WordPress, when the "Friend Connections" component is enabled, allows remote attackers to inject arbitrary web script or HTML via the friendship_request_message parameter to wp-admin/admin-ajax.php. NOTE: some of these details are obtained from third party information.

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

Reaching this weakness in BuddyPress Extended Friendship Request < 1.0.2 takes a caller who can reach the endpoint. 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 BuddyPress Extended Friendship Request the fix is 1.0.2: builds < 1.0.2 are affected, anything from 1.0.2 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 1.0.2, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to BuddyPress Extended Friendship Request: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: BuddyPress Extended Friendship Request 1.0.2 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Firewall
  • Alerts

External References

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