CVE-2023-2736

Groundhogg <= 2.7.9.8 - Cross-Site Request Forgery to Privilege Escalation

2023-05-19 00:00

Strategic Overview

Status: Patched in 2.7.10
Affected Plugin: Groundhogg — CRM, Newsletters, and Marketing Automation
Affected Version: <= 2.7.9.8
CVSS: 7.5High
Weakness type: CWE-352 · Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
CVE: CVE-2023-2736

View all Groundhogg — CRM, Newsletters, and Marketing Automation vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2023-2736 is a high-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the Groundhogg WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 2.7.9.8. It carries a CVSS score of 7.5 (reachable over the network; high confidentiality, integrity, availability impact). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 2.7.10; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed May 2023, reported by István Márton.

Vulnerability Overview

The Groundhogg plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Cross-Site Request Forgery in versions up to, and including, 2.7.9.8. This is due to missing nonce validation in the 'ajax_edit_contact' function. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers to receive the auto login link via shortcode and then modify the assigned user to the auto login link to elevate verified user privileges 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, and no privileges on the target site. A successful exploit has high impact on confidentiality, integrity, availability — full site compromise territory.

CWE-352: Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)

Groundhogg <= 2.7.9.8 carries this weakness at ajax_edit_contact, and reaching it 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 Groundhogg the fix is 2.7.10: builds <= 2.7.9.8 are affected, anything from 2.7.10 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 2.7.10, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Groundhogg: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Groundhogg 2.7.10 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

Firewall
Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2023-2736 https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/9bf472f1-5980-48ee-aa10-aad19b6f2456 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-2736

Related records

Same weakness class

Other vulnerabilities in Groundhogg — CRM, Newsletters, and Marketing Automation

CVSS Vector

7.5

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Base

Attack VectorNetwork
Attack ComplexityHigh
Privileges RequiredNone
User InteractionRequired
ScopeUnchanged
ConfidentialityHigh
IntegrityHigh
AvailabilityHigh

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