CVE-2019-19982

Email Subscribers & Newsletters <= 4.2.2 - Unauthenticated Option Creation

2019-11-13 00:00
Chloe Chamberland

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 4.2.3
Affected Plugin
Email Subscribers & Newsletters – Email Marketing, Post Notifications & Newsletter Plugin for WordPress
Affected Version
<= 4.2.2
CVSS
6.5Medium
Weakness type
CWE-287 · Improper Authentication
CVE
CVE-2019-19982
View all Email Subscribers & Newsletters – Email Marketing, Post Notifications & Newsletter Plugin for WordPress vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2019-19982 is a medium-severity Improper Authentication vulnerability in the Email Subscribers & Newsletters WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 4.2.2. It carries a CVSS score of 6.5 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 4.2.3; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed November 2019, reported by Chloe Chamberland.

Vulnerability Overview

The WordPress plugin, Email Subscribers & Newsletters, before 4.2.3 had a flaw that allowed for unauthenticated option creation. In order to exploit this vulnerability, an attacker would need to send a /wp-admin/admin-post.php?es_skip=1&option_name= request.

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, and no interaction from a victim user.

CWE-287: Improper Authentication

Reaching this weakness in Email Subscribers & Newsletters <= 4.2.2 takes no account at all. Improper authentication means the mechanism that proves who a caller is can be satisfied without the secret it was supposed to require.

An attacker authenticates as another user — administrators included — without ever knowing a password, so password policies and login rate limits never come into play. For Email Subscribers & Newsletters the fix is 4.2.3: builds <= 4.2.2 are affected, anything from 4.2.3 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 4.2.3, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

This one needs no account at all, which puts it outside what login hardening can reach; WordSec's login security narrows the account-level paths around it, and the firewall is what inspects the request itself. None of that substitutes for the fix: Email Subscribers & Newsletters 4.2.3 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Login Security
  • Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2019-19982https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/ff5d8f5f-c7af-4789-9920-a09d2733b8eehttps://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2019-19982

Related records

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