Count per Day < 3.5.5 - Unauthenticated Stored Cross-Site Scripting

2016-08-05 00:00
Julien Rentrop

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 3.5.5
Affected Plugin
Count per Day
Affected Version
< 3.5.5
CVSS
8.3High
Weakness type
CWE-79 · Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
CVE
CVE pending
View all Count per Day vulnerabilities

At a glance

This record tracks a high-severity Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in the Count per Day WordPress plugin, affecting versions < 3.5.5. It carries a CVSS score of 8.3 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 3.5.5; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed August 2016, reported by Julien Rentrop.

Vulnerability Overview

The Count per Day plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Stored Cross-Site Scripting in versions up to, and including, 3.5.4 due to insufficient input sanitization and output escaping. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to inject arbitrary web scripts in pages that execute if they can successfully trick a user 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, and no interaction from a victim user.

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

Reaching this weakness in Count per Day < 3.5.5 takes no account at all. 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 Count per Day the fix is 3.5.5: builds < 3.5.5 are affected, anything from 3.5.5 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 3.5.5, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

Requests carrying this pattern arrive without a session, so nothing upstream of the firewall gets a chance to reject them: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Count per Day 3.5.5 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Firewall
  • Login Security
  • Alerts

External References

https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/ffa90aae-c512-4e7f-a041-e3e41cb8a1d8

Related records

Vulnerability data © Defiant, Inc., provided under the Wordfence Intelligence T&C