CVE-2021-25101

Anti-Malware Security and Brute-Force Firewall <= 4.20.93 - Reflected Cross-Site Scripting

2022-01-24 00:00
ZhongFu Su

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 4.20.94
Affected Version
< 4.20.94
CVSS
6.1Medium
Weakness type
CWE-79 · Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
CVE
CVE-2021-25101
View all Anti-Malware Security and Brute-Force Firewall vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2021-25101 is a medium-severity Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in the Anti-Malware Security and Brute-Force Firewall WordPress plugin, affecting versions < 4.20.94. 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 4.20.94; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed January 2022, reported by ZhongFu Su.

Vulnerability Overview

The Anti-Malware Security and Brute-Force Firewall WordPress plugin before 4.20.94 does not sanitise and escape the POST data before outputting it back in attributes of an admin page, leading to a Reflected Cross-Site scripting. Due to the presence of specific parameter value, available to admin users, this can only be exploited by an admin against another admin user.

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 Anti-Malware Security and Brute-Force Firewall < 4.20.94 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 Anti-Malware Security and Brute-Force Firewall the fix is 4.20.94: builds < 4.20.94 are affected, anything from 4.20.94 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 4.20.94, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Anti-Malware Security and Brute-Force Firewall: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Anti-Malware Security and Brute-Force Firewall 4.20.94 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Firewall
  • Alerts

External References

Related records

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