Contact Form Email <= 1.3.11 - Cross-Site Request Forgery to Cross-Site Scripting

2015-05-13 00:00
Mahdi.Hidden (Ashiyane Digital Security Team)

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 1.3.12
Affected Plugin
Contact Form Email
Affected Version
< 1.3.12
CVSS
8.8High
Weakness type
CWE-352 · Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
CVE
CVE pending
View all Contact Form Email vulnerabilities

At a glance

This record tracks a high-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the Contact Form Email WordPress plugin, affecting versions < 1.3.12. 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 1.3.12; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed May 2015, reported by Mahdi.Hidden (Ashiyane Digital Security Team).

Vulnerability Overview

The Contact Form Email plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Cross-Site Request Forgery in versions up to, and including, 1.3.11. This is due to missing nonce validation on the 'cp_cfte_rep_enable' action. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to modify plugin settings and inject malicious JavaScript via the 'cp_cfte_rep_message' parameter (in versions less than or equal to 1.1.4) 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. A successful exploit has high impact on confidentiality, integrity, availability — full site compromise territory.

CWE-352: Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)

Contact Form Email < 1.3.12 carries this weakness at cp_cfte_rep_enable, 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 Email the fix is 1.3.12: builds < 1.3.12 are affected, anything from 1.3.12 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 1.3.12, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Contact Form Email: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Contact Form Email 1.3.12 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Firewall
  • Alerts

External References

https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/fa9450a4-2b96-45e4-b2dc-9a4b26449d19

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