Contact Form 7 Captcha <= 0.0.8 - Cross-Site Request Forgery to Stored Cross-Site Scripting
Strategic Overview
- Status
- Patched in 0.0.9
- Affected Plugin
- LukasApps CAPTCHA tools for Contact Form 7
- Affected Version
< 0.0.9- CVSS
- 8.8High
- Weakness type
- CWE-79 · Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
- CVE
CVE-2021-24565
At a glance
CVE-2021-24565 is a high-severity Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in the LukasApps CAPTCHA tools for Contact Form 7 WordPress plugin, affecting versions < 0.0.9. It carries a CVSS score of 8.8 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity; high confidentiality, integrity, availability impact). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 0.0.9; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed July 2021, reported by dc11.
Vulnerability Overview
The Contact Form 7 Captcha WordPress plugin before 0.0.9 does not have any CSRF check in place when saving its settings, allowing attacker to make a logged in user with the manage_options change them. Furthermore, the settings are not escaped when output in attributes, leading to a Stored Cross-Site Scripting issue.
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. A successful exploit has high impact on confidentiality, integrity, availability — full site compromise territory.
CWE-79: Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
Reaching this weakness in LukasApps CAPTCHA tools for Contact Form 7 < 0.0.9 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 LukasApps CAPTCHA tools for Contact Form 7 the fix is 0.0.9: builds < 0.0.9 are affected, anything from 0.0.9 onward is not.
Remediation
Update to version 0.0.9, or a newer patched version
How does WordSec protect against this?
The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to LukasApps CAPTCHA tools for Contact Form 7: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: LukasApps CAPTCHA tools for Contact Form 7 0.0.9 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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