CM Tooltip Glossary <= 3.9.20 - Authenticated Stored Cross-Site Scripting
Strategic Overview
- Status
- Patched in 3.9.21
- Affected Plugin
- CM Tooltip Glossary
- Affected Version
< 3.9.21- CVSS
- 5.4Medium
- Weakness type
- CWE-79 · Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
- CVE
CVE-2021-24678
At a glance
CVE-2021-24678 is a medium-severity Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in the CM Tooltip Glossary WordPress plugin, affecting versions < 3.9.21. It carries a CVSS score of 5.4 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires an authenticated account. The issue is fixed in version 3.9.21; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed September 2021, reported by apple502j.
Vulnerability Overview
The CM Tooltip Glossary plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Stored Cross-Site Scripting in versions up to, and including, 3.9.20 due to insufficient input sanitization and output escaping. It does not escape some glossary_tooltip shortcode attributes. This makes it possible for Contributor-level attackers to inject arbitrary web scripts in pages that will execute whenever a user accesses an injected page.
Technical Analysis
The vector marks this flaw as remotely reachable over the network, with low attack complexity — no special timing or configuration is needed.
CWE-79: Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
Reaching this weakness in CM Tooltip Glossary < 3.9.21 takes any authenticated account. 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 CM Tooltip Glossary the fix is 3.9.21: builds < 3.9.21 are affected, anything from 3.9.21 onward is not.
Remediation
Update to version 3.9.21, or a newer patched version
How does WordSec protect against this?
The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to CM Tooltip Glossary: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: CM Tooltip Glossary 3.9.21 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.
- Firewall
- Alerts
External References
Related records
Same weakness class
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