CVE-2023-25449

cformsII <= 15.0.4 - Cross-Site Request Forgery leading to Settings Updates

2023-03-08 00:00

Strategic Overview

Status: Patched in 15.0.5
Affected Plugin: cformsII
Affected Version: <= 15.0.4
CVSS: 4.3Medium
Weakness type: CWE-352 · Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
CVE: CVE-2023-25449

At a glance

CVE-2023-25449 is a medium-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the cformsII WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 15.0.4. 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 15.0.5; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed March 2023, reported by Rio Darmawan.

Vulnerability Overview

The cformsII plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Cross-Site Request Forgery in versions up to, and including, 15.0.4. This is due to missing or incorrect nonce validation in the 'cforms-options.php', 'cforms-global-settings.php', 'cforms-corrupted.php' files. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to update global settings and reset form data 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)

Reaching this weakness in cformsII <= 15.0.4 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 cformsII the fix is 15.0.5: builds <= 15.0.4 are affected, anything from 15.0.5 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 15.0.5, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to cformsII: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: cformsII 15.0.5 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

Firewall
Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2023-25449 https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/5798de72-b589-4474-82b2-df6ef26325a3 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-25449

Related records

Same weakness class

Other vulnerabilities in cformsII

CVSS Vector

4.3

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N

Base

Attack VectorNetwork
Attack ComplexityLow
Privileges RequiredNone
User InteractionRequired
ScopeUnchanged
ConfidentialityNone
IntegrityLow
AvailabilityNone

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