CVE-2013-2710

Contextual Related Posts <= 1.8.6 - Cross-Site Request Forgery to Cross-Site Scripting

2014-08-01 00:00

Strategic Overview

Status: Patched in 1.8.7
Affected Plugin: Contextual Related Posts
Affected Version: <= 1.8.6
CVSS: 8.8High
Weakness type: CWE-352 · Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
CVE: CVE-2013-2710

View all Contextual Related Posts vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2013-2710 is a high-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the Contextual Related Posts WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 1.8.6. 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 1.8.7; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed August 2014, reported by Charlie Eriksen.

Vulnerability Overview

Cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the Contextual Related Posts plugin before 1.8.7 for WordPress allows remote attackers to hijack the authentication of administrators for requests that conduct cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks via unspecified vectors.

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)

Reaching this weakness in Contextual Related Posts <= 1.8.6 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 Contextual Related Posts the fix is 1.8.7: builds <= 1.8.6 are affected, anything from 1.8.7 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 1.8.7, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Contextual Related Posts: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Contextual Related Posts 1.8.7 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

Firewall
Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2013-2710 https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/81a7afc0-05be-4966-b762-081ef553d4e8 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2013-2710

Related records

Same weakness class

CVSS Vector

8.8

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

Base

Attack VectorNetwork
Attack ComplexityLow
Privileges RequiredNone
User InteractionRequired
ScopeUnchanged
ConfidentialityHigh
IntegrityHigh
AvailabilityHigh

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