CVE-2024-3481

Counter Box – WordPress plugin for countdown, timer, counter <= 1.2.3 - Cross-Site Request Forgery

2024-04-11 00:00
Bob Matyas

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 1.2.4
Affected Plugin
Counter Box – Add Countdowns, Timers & Dynamic Counters to WordPress
Affected Version
<= 1.2.3
CVSS
4.3Medium
Weakness type
CWE-352 · Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
CVE
CVE-2024-3481
View all Counter Box – Add Countdowns, Timers & Dynamic Counters to WordPress vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2024-3481 is a medium-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the Counter Box WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 1.2.3. It carries a CVSS score of 4.3 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 1.2.4; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed April 2024, reported by Bob Matyas.

Vulnerability Overview

The Counter Box – WordPress plugin for countdown, timer, counter plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Cross-Site Request Forgery in all versions up to, and including, 1.2.3. This is due to missing or incorrect nonce validation on the counter-box page. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to delete counters 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.

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

Reaching this weakness in Counter Box <= 1.2.3 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 Counter Box the fix is 1.2.4: builds <= 1.2.3 are affected, anything from 1.2.4 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 1.2.4, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Counter Box: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Counter Box 1.2.4 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Firewall
  • Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2024-3481https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/c9f71433-7b86-46c7-b91e-bc59679f0351https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2024-3481

Related records

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