CVE-2023-4404

Donation Forms by Charitable <= 1.7.0.12 - Unauthenticated Privilege Escalation

2023-08-17 00:00
István Márton

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 1.7.0.13
Affected Plugin
Charitable – Donation & Fundraising Platform (Donation Forms, Recurring Donations & Fundraising Campaigns)
Affected Version
<= 1.7.0.12
CVSS
9.8Critical
Weakness type
CWE-269 · Improper Privilege Management
CVE
CVE-2023-4404
View all Charitable – Donation & Fundraising Platform (Donation Forms, Recurring Donations & Fundraising Campaigns) vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2023-4404 is a critical-severity Improper Privilege Management vulnerability in the Charitable WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 1.7.0.12. It carries a CVSS score of 9.8 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity; high confidentiality, integrity, availability impact). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 1.7.0.13; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed August 2023, reported by István Márton.

Vulnerability Overview

The Donation Forms by Charitable plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to privilege escalation in versions up to, and including, 1.7.0.12 due to insufficient restriction on the 'update_core_user' function. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to specify their user role by supplying the 'role' parameter during a registration.

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, and no interaction from a victim user. A successful exploit has high impact on confidentiality, integrity, availability — full site compromise territory.

CWE-269: Improper Privilege Management

Charitable <= 1.7.0.12 carries this weakness at update_core_user, and reaching it takes no account at all. Improper privilege management means the code lets an account end up with capabilities its role should not have.

It converts a low-privileged account into an administrative one, which makes every other restriction on the site irrelevant. For Charitable the fix is 1.7.0.13: builds <= 1.7.0.12 are affected, anything from 1.7.0.13 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 1.7.0.13, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

This one needs no account at all, which puts it outside what login hardening can reach; WordSec's login security narrows the account-level paths around it, and the firewall is what inspects the request itself. None of that substitutes for the fix: Charitable 1.7.0.13 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Login Security
  • Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2023-4404https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/522ecc1c-5834-4325-9234-79cf712213f3https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-4404

Related records

Vulnerability data © Defiant, Inc., provided under the Wordfence Intelligence T&C