Comment Reply Email <= 1.3 - Cross-Site Request Forgery to Stored Cross-Site Scripting
Strategic Overview
- Status
- Patched in 1.5
- Affected Plugin
- Comment Reply Email
- Affected Version
<= 1.3- CVSS
- 6.1Medium
- Weakness type
- CWE-79 · Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
- CVE
CVE-2024-35773
At a glance
CVE-2024-35773 is a medium-severity Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in the Comment Reply Email WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 1.3. 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 1.5; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed July 2024, reported by Masamichi Aoki.
Vulnerability Overview
The Comment Reply Email plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Cross-Site Request Forgery in all versions up to, and including, 1.3. This is due to missing or incorrect nonce validation on the optionsPage() function. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to update the plugin's settings and inject malicious web scripts 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-79: Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
Comment Reply Email <= 1.3 carries this weakness at optionsPage(), and reaching it 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 Comment Reply Email the fix is 1.5: builds <= 1.3 are affected, anything from 1.5 onward is not.
Remediation
Update to version 1.5, or a newer patched version
How does WordSec protect against this?
The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Comment Reply Email: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Comment Reply Email 1.5 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.
- Firewall
- Alerts
External References
Related records
Same weakness class
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