CVE-2021-24805

DW Question & Answer Pro <= 1.3.6 - Cross-Site Request Forgery

2022-04-08 00:00

Strategic Overview

Status: Patched in 1.3.7
Affected Plugin: DW Question Answer Pro
Affected Version: <= 1.3.6
CVSS: 5.4Medium
Weakness type: CWE-352 · Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
CVE: CVE-2021-24805

View all DW Question Answer Pro vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2021-24805 is a medium-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the DW Question Answer Pro WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 1.3.6. It carries a CVSS score of 5.4 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 1.3.7; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed April 2022, reported by Brandon James Roldan (tomorrowisnew).

Vulnerability Overview

The DW Question & Answer Pro WordPress plugin through 1.3.6 does not properly check for Cross-Site Request Forgery in some of its functions, allowing attackers to make logged in users perform unwanted actions, such as update a comment or a question status.

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 DW Question Answer Pro <= 1.3.6 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 DW Question Answer Pro the fix is 1.3.7: builds <= 1.3.6 are affected, anything from 1.3.7 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 1.3.7, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to DW Question Answer Pro: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: DW Question Answer Pro 1.3.7 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

Firewall
Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2021-24805 https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/3282244f-2b5f-4795-9f3f-461c4fd2e296 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2021-24805

Related records

CVSS Vector

5.4

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

Base

Attack VectorNetwork
Attack ComplexityLow
Privileges RequiredNone
User InteractionRequired
ScopeUnchanged
ConfidentialityLow
IntegrityLow
AvailabilityNone

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