Strategic Overview
- Status
- Patched in 2.1.2
- Affected Plugin
- Email Encoder – Protect Email Addresses and Phone Numbers
- Affected Version
<= 2.1.1- CVSS
- 6.1Medium
- Weakness type
- CWE-79 · Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
- CVE
CVE-2021-24599
At a glance
CVE-2021-24599 is a medium-severity Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in the Email Encoder WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 2.1.1. It carries a CVSS score of 6.1 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 2.1.2; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed August 2021, reported by dc11.
Vulnerability Overview
The Email Encoder – Protect Email Addresses WordPress plugin before 2.1.2 has an endpoint that requires no authentication and will render a user supplied value in the HTML response without escaping or sanitizing the data.
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-79: Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
Reaching this weakness in Email Encoder <= 2.1.1 takes a caller who can reach the endpoint. 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 Email Encoder the fix is 2.1.2: builds <= 2.1.1 are affected, anything from 2.1.2 onward is not.
Remediation
Update to version 2.1.2, or a newer patched version
How does WordSec protect against this?
The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Email Encoder: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Email Encoder 2.1.2 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.
- Firewall
- Alerts
External References
Related records
Same weakness class
Other vulnerabilities in Email Encoder – Protect Email Addresses and Phone Numbers
- 6.4CVE-2023-47821: Email Encoder Bundle <= 2.1.8 Stored XSS
CVE-2023-47821 - 6.4CVE-2023-4599: Email Encoder <= 2.1.8 Stored Cross-Site Scripting
CVE-2023-4599 - 6.1Email Encoder < 1.4.2 Cross-Site Scripting
- 4.4CVE-2024-7083: Email Encoder Stored XSS
CVE-2024-7083 - 4.4CVE-2024-4483: Email Encoder Stored XSS
CVE-2024-4483
Vulnerability data © Defiant, Inc., provided under the Wordfence Intelligence T&C