CVE-2024-8791

Donation Forms by Charitable – Donations Plugin & Fundraising Platform for WordPress <= 1.8.1.14 - Insecure Direct Object Reference to Account Takeover and Privilege Escalation

2024-09-23 00:00
wesley (wcraft)

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 1.8.1.15
Affected Plugin
Charitable – Donation & Fundraising Platform (Donation Forms, Recurring Donations & Fundraising Campaigns)
Affected Version
<= 1.8.1.14
CVSS
9.8Critical
Weakness type
CWE-639 · Authorization Bypass Through User-Controlled Key
CVE
CVE-2024-8791
View all Charitable – Donation & Fundraising Platform (Donation Forms, Recurring Donations & Fundraising Campaigns) vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2024-8791 is a critical-severity Authorization Bypass Through User-Controlled Key vulnerability in the Charitable WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 1.8.1.14. 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 1.8.1.15; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed September 2024, reported by wesley (wcraft).

Vulnerability Overview

The Donation Forms by Charitable – Donations Plugin & Fundraising Platform for WordPress plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to privilege escalation in all versions up to, and including, 1.8.1.14. This is due to the plugin not properly verifying a user's identity when the ID parameter is supplied through the update_core_user() function. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to update the email address and password of arbitrary user accounts, including administrators, which can then be used to log in to those user accounts.

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-639: Authorization Bypass Through User-Controlled Key

Charitable <= 1.8.1.14 carries this weakness at update_core_user(), and reaching it takes a caller who can reach the endpoint. Authorization bypass through a user-controlled key, often called insecure direct object reference, means the application looks up a record by an identifier from the request without checking that the caller owns it.

Changing a number in the request is enough to read or modify other users' records, which on commerce and membership sites means customer data. For Charitable the fix is 1.8.1.15: builds <= 1.8.1.14 are affected, anything from 1.8.1.15 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 1.8.1.15, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

Because it turns on account access, WordSec's login security is the relevant layer: role-based two-factor, captcha and brute-force limits raise the cost of getting the account this needs. None of that substitutes for the fix: Charitable 1.8.1.15 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Login Security
  • Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2024-8791https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/0ee60943-b583-4a99-8e62-846b380c98aahttps://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2024-8791

Related records

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