Contact Form DB <= 2.8.19 - Cross-Site Scripting
Strategic Overview
- Status
- Patched in 2.8.20
- Affected Plugin
- Contact Form DB
- Affected Version
<= 2.8.19- CVSS
- 6.1Medium
- Weakness type
- CWE-79 · Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
- CVE
CVE-2014-7139
At a glance
CVE-2014-7139 is a medium-severity Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in the Contact Form DB WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 2.8.19. 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 2.8.20; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed October 2014, reported by High-Tech Bridge Security Research Lab.
Vulnerability Overview
Multiple cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities in the Contact Form DB (aka CFDB and contact-form-7-to-database-extension) plugin before 2.8.20 for WordPress allow remote attackers to inject arbitrary web script or HTML via the (1) form or (2) enc parameter in the CF7DBPluginShortCodeBuilder page to wp-admin/admin.php. A partial patch was released in version 2.8.16 but the problem was not fully resolved until 2.8.20.
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')
Reaching this weakness in Contact Form DB <= 2.8.19 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 Contact Form DB the fix is 2.8.20: builds <= 2.8.19 are affected, anything from 2.8.20 onward is not.
Remediation
Update to version 2.8.20, or a newer patched version
How does WordSec protect against this?
The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Contact Form DB: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Contact Form DB 2.8.20 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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