CVE-2022-27853

Contest Gallery <= 13.1.0.9 - Authenticated (Author+) Stored Cross-Site Scripting

2021-12-20 12:39

Strategic Overview

Status: Patched in 14.0.0
Affected Plugin: Contest Gallery – Upload & Vote Photos, Media, Sell with PayPal & Stripe
Affected Version: <= 13.1.0.9
CVSS: 6.4Medium
Weakness type: CWE-79 · Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
CVE: CVE-2022-27853

View all Contest Gallery – Upload & Vote Photos, Media, Sell with PayPal & Stripe vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2022-27853 is a medium-severity Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in the Contest Gallery WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 13.1.0.9. It carries a CVSS score of 6.4 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires an authenticated account at Author level or above. The issue is fixed in version 14.0.0; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed December 2021, reported by Ngo Van Thien.

Vulnerability Overview

Authenticated (author or higher role) Stored Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) in Contest Gallery (WordPress plugin) <= 13.1.0.9

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 interaction from a victim user.

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

Reaching this weakness in Contest Gallery <= 13.1.0.9 takes an account at Author level or above. 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 Contest Gallery the fix is 14.0.0: builds <= 13.1.0.9 are affected, anything from 14.0.0 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 14.0.0, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

An attacker needs Author access first, so the firewall sees the attempt as traffic from a logged-in account: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Contest Gallery 14.0.0 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

Firewall
Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2022-27853 https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/78f745f9-c44e-4458-9381-f639c842a31e https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-27853

Related records

Same weakness class

Other vulnerabilities in Contest Gallery – Upload & Vote Photos, Media, Sell with PayPal & Stripe

CVSS Vector

6.4

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N

Base

Attack VectorNetwork
Attack ComplexityLow
Privileges RequiredLow
User InteractionNone
ScopeChanged
ConfidentialityLow
IntegrityLow
AvailabilityNone

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