CVE-2022-4163

Contest Gallery <= 19.1.4.1 - Authenticated (Author+) SQL Injection via cg_activate and cg_deactivate

2022-11-29 00:00
Kunal Sharma

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 19.1.5
Affected Plugin
Contest Gallery – Upload & Vote Photos, Media, Sell with PayPal & Stripe
Affected Version
<= 19.1.4.1
CVSS
7.5High
Weakness type
CWE-79 · Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
CVE
CVE-2022-4163
View all Contest Gallery – Upload & Vote Photos, Media, Sell with PayPal & Stripe vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2022-4163 is a high-severity Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in the Contest Gallery WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 19.1.4.1. It carries a CVSS score of 7.5 (reachable over the network; high confidentiality, integrity, availability impact). Exploitation requires an authenticated account at Author level or above. The issue is fixed in version 19.1.5; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed November 2022, reported by Kunal Sharma.

Vulnerability Overview

The Contest Gallery plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to SQL Injection in versions up to, and including, 19.1.4.1 due to insufficient escaping on the user supplied cg_activate and cg_deactivate parameters and lack of sufficient preparation on the existing SQL query. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with author-level privileges or higher to append additional SQL queries into already existing queries that can be used to extract sensitive information from the database.

Technical Analysis

The vector marks this flaw as remotely reachable over the network, and no interaction from a victim user. A successful exploit has high impact on confidentiality, integrity, availability — full site compromise territory.

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

Reaching this weakness in Contest Gallery <= 19.1.4.1 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 19.1.5: builds <= 19.1.4.1 are affected, anything from 19.1.5 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 19.1.5, 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 19.1.5 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Firewall
  • Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2022-4163https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/5d080f5b-6646-47ef-8ae7-8b94270f9f59https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-4163

Related records

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