CVE-2021-25080

Contact Form Entries <= 1.1.6 - Unauthenticated Stored Cross-Site Scripting

2021-01-05 00:00
Gaetano Perrone

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 1.1.7
Affected Plugin
Database for Contact Form 7, WPforms, Elementor forms
Affected Version
<= 1.1.6
CVSS
7.2High
Weakness type
CWE-79 · Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
CVE
CVE-2021-25080
View all Database for Contact Form 7, WPforms, Elementor forms vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2021-25080 is a high-severity Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in the Database for Contact Form 7, WPforms, Elementor forms WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 1.1.6. It carries a CVSS score of 7.2 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 1.1.7; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed January 2021, reported by Gaetano Perrone.

Vulnerability Overview

The Contact Form Entries WordPress plugin before 1.1.7 does not validate, sanitise and escape the IP address retrieved via headers such as CLIENT-IP and X-FORWARDED-FOR, allowing unauthenticated attackers to perform Cross-Site Scripting attacks against logged in admins viewing the created entry

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.

CWE-79: Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')

Reaching this weakness in Database for Contact Form 7, WPforms, Elementor forms <= 1.1.6 takes no account at all. 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 Database for Contact Form 7, WPforms, Elementor forms the fix is 1.1.7: builds <= 1.1.6 are affected, anything from 1.1.7 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 1.1.7, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

Requests carrying this pattern arrive without a session, so nothing upstream of the firewall gets a chance to reject them: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Database for Contact Form 7, WPforms, Elementor forms 1.1.7 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Firewall
  • Login Security
  • Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2021-25080https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/38e40a74-c4b7-4960-880d-a14e77fe1904https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2021-25080

Related records

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