CVE-2021-39355

Indeed Job Importer <= 1.0.5 - Authenticated (Admin+) Stored Cross-Site Scripting

2021-10-15 19:23
Thinkland Security Team

Strategic Overview

Status
Unpatched
Affected Plugin
Indeed Job Importer
Affected Version
<= 1.0.5
CVSS
5.5Medium
Weakness type
CWE-79 · Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
CVE
CVE-2021-39355
View all Indeed Job Importer vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2021-39355 is a medium-severity Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in the Indeed Job Importer WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 1.0.5. It carries a CVSS score of 5.5 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires an authenticated account at Admin level or above. No fixed release has been reported yet; treat installations running this software as exposed. Disclosed October 2021, reported by Thinkland Security Team.

Vulnerability Overview

The Indeed Job Importer WordPress plugin is vulnerable to Stored Cross-Site Scripting due to insufficient input validation and sanitization via several parameters found in the ~/indeed-job-importer/trunk/indeed-job-importer.php file which allowed attackers with administrative user access to inject arbitrary web scripts, in versions up to and including 1.0.5. This affects multi-site installations where unfiltered_html is disabled for administrators, and sites where unfiltered_html is disabled.

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 interaction from a victim user.

CWE-79: Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')

Reaching this weakness in Indeed Job Importer <= 1.0.5 takes an account at Admin level or above. 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. No fixed build of this plugin is recorded for Indeed Job Importer yet, so installs running <= 1.0.5 stay exposed until the vendor ships one.

Remediation

No known patch available. Please review the vulnerability's details in depth and employ mitigations based on your organization's risk tolerance. It may be best to uninstall the affected software and find a replacement.

How does WordSec protect against this?

An attacker needs Admin access first, so the firewall sees the attempt as traffic from a logged-in account: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. No patched version is recorded yet, which is the case where a filtering layer matters most, because there is nothing to update to.

  • Firewall
  • Alerts

External References

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