Strategic Overview
- Status
- Patched in 3.0.1
- Affected Plugin
- Cool Author Box – For Widget and Post Content
- Affected Version
<= 3.0.0- CVSS
- 4.3Medium
- Weakness type
- CWE-352 · Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
- CVE
CVE-2025-47447
At a glance
CVE-2025-47447 is a medium-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the Cool Author Box WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 3.0.0. 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 3.0.1; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed May 2025, reported by Nabil Irawan.
Vulnerability Overview
The Cool Author Box plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Cross-Site Request Forgery in versions up to, and including, 3.0.0. This is due to missing or incorrect nonce validation on the hmcab_admin_settings() function. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to update plugin 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)
Cool Author Box <= 3.0.0 carries this weakness at hmcab_admin_settings(), 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 Cool Author Box the fix is 3.0.1: builds <= 3.0.0 are affected, anything from 3.0.1 onward is not.
Remediation
Update to version 3.0.1, or a newer patched version
How does WordSec protect against this?
The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Cool Author Box: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Cool Author Box 3.0.1 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.
- Firewall
- Alerts
External References
Related records
Other vulnerabilities in Cool Author Box – For Widget and Post Content
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