CVE-2014-5346

Disqus Comment System < 2.79 - Multiple Cross-Site Request Forgery

2014-09-17 00:00
Voxel@Night

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 2.79
Affected Plugin
Disqus Comment System
Affected Version
< 2.79
CVSS
6.3Medium
Weakness type
CWE-352 · Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
CVE
CVE-2014-5346
View all Disqus Comment System vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2014-5346 is a medium-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the Disqus Comment System WordPress plugin, affecting versions < 2.79. It carries a CVSS score of 6.3 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 2.79; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed September 2014, reported by Voxel@Night.

Vulnerability Overview

Multiple cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerabilities in the Disqus Comment System plugin before 2.79 for WordPress allow remote attackers to hijack the authentication of administrators for requests that (1) activate or (2) deactivate the plugin via the active parameter to wp-admin/edit-comments.php, (3) import comments via an import_comments action, or (4) export comments via an export_comments action to wp-admin/index.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.

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

Reaching this weakness in Disqus Comment System < 2.79 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 Disqus Comment System the fix is 2.79: builds < 2.79 are affected, anything from 2.79 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 2.79, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Disqus Comment System: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Disqus Comment System 2.79 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Firewall
  • Alerts

External References

Related records

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