Disable Comments – Remove Comments & Stop Spam [Multi-Site Support] < 1.0.4 - Cross-Site Request Forgery
Strategic Overview
- Status
- Patched in 1.0.4
- Affected Version
< 1.0.4- CVSS
- 8.8High
- Weakness type
- CWE-352 · Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
- CVE
CVE-2014-2550
At a glance
CVE-2014-2550 is a high-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the Disable Comments WordPress plugin, affecting versions < 1.0.4. 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 1.0.4; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed August 2014, reported by Mallory Adams.
Vulnerability Overview
Cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the Disable Comments plugin before 1.0.4 for WordPress allows remote attackers to hijack the authentication of administrators for requests that enable comments via a request to the disable_comments_settings page to wp-admin/options-general.php.
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 Disable Comments < 1.0.4 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 Disable Comments the fix is 1.0.4: builds < 1.0.4 are affected, anything from 1.0.4 onward is not.
Remediation
Update to version 1.0.4, or a newer patched version
How does WordSec protect against this?
The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Disable Comments: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Disable Comments 1.0.4 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.
- Firewall
- Alerts
External References
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