CVE-2021-4427

Vuukle Comments, Reactions, Share Bar, Revenue <= 3.4.31 - Cross-Site Request Forgery Bypass

2021-07-05 00:00
Jerome Bruandet

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 4.0
Affected Version
<= 3.4.31
CVSS
4.3Medium
Weakness type
CWE-352 · Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
CVE
CVE-2021-4427
View all Vuukle – Comments, Reactions, Quizzes, Share Bar & Ad Revenue vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2021-4427 is a medium-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the Vuukle WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 3.4.31. It carries a CVSS score of 4.3 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 4.0; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed July 2021, reported by Jerome Bruandet.

Vulnerability Overview

The Vuukle Comments, Reactions, Share Bar, Revenue plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Cross-Site Request Forgery in versions up to, and including, 3.4.31. This is due to missing or incorrect nonce validation in the /admin/partials/free-comments-for-wordpress-vuukle-admin-display.php file. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to edit the plugins settings via a forged request granted they can trick a site administrator into performing an action such as clicking on a link.

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 Vuukle <= 3.4.31 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 Vuukle the fix is 4.0: builds <= 3.4.31 are affected, anything from 4.0 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 4.0, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Vuukle: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Vuukle 4.0 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Firewall
  • Alerts

External References

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