Strategic Overview
- Status
- Patched in 1.13.5
- Affected Version
< 1.13.5- CVSS
- 8.8High
- Weakness type
- CWE-352 · Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
- CVE
CVE-2019-11591
At a glance
CVE-2019-11591 is a high-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the Contact Form by WD WordPress plugin, affecting versions < 1.13.5. 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 1.13.5; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed April 2019, reported by p4n.
Vulnerability Overview
The WebDorado Contact Form plugin before 1.13.5 for WordPress allows CSRF via the wp-admin/admin-ajax.php action parameter, with resultant local file inclusion via directory traversal, because there can be a discrepancy between the $_POST['action'] value and the $_GET['action'] value, and the latter is unsanitized.
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-352: Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
Contact Form by WD < 1.13.5 carries this weakness at action, and reaching it takes a caller who can reach the endpoint. Cross-site request forgery abuses the fact that browsers attach a victim's cookies to any request, so a state-changing action that only checks who you are, not whether you meant to act, can be triggered from another site.
An attacker who gets a logged-in user to load a crafted page can perform that action as them, with the impact scaling to whatever the victim's role is allowed to do. For Contact Form by WD the fix is 1.13.5: builds < 1.13.5 are affected, anything from 1.13.5 onward is not.
Remediation
Update to version 1.13.5, or a newer patched version
How does WordSec protect against this?
The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Contact Form by WD: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Contact Form by WD 1.13.5 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.
- Firewall
- Alerts
External References
Related records
Other vulnerabilities in Contact Form by WD – responsive drag & drop contact form builder tool
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