Insight Core <= 1.0 - Authenticated PHP Object Injection & Stored Cross-Site Scripting
Strategic Overview
- Status
- Unpatched
- Affected Plugin
- Insight Core
- Affected Version
<= 1.0- CVSS
- 5.4Medium
- Weakness type
- CWE-862 · Missing Authorization
- CVE
CVE-2021-24950
At a glance
CVE-2021-24950 is a medium-severity Missing Authorization vulnerability in the Insight Core WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 1.0. It carries a CVSS score of 5.4 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires an authenticated account. No fixed release has been reported yet; treat installations running this software as exposed. Disclosed December 2021, reported by Krzysztof Zając.
Vulnerability Overview
The Insight Core WordPress plugin through 1.0 does not have any authorisation and CSRF checks in the insight_customizer_options_import (available to any authenticated user), does not validate user input before passing it to unserialize(), nor sanitise and escape it before outputting it in the response. As a result, it could allow users with a role as low as Subscriber to perform PHP Object Injection, as well as Stored Cross-Site Scripting attacks
Technical Analysis
The vector marks this flaw as remotely reachable over the network, with low attack complexity — no special timing or configuration is needed.
CWE-862: Missing Authorization
Insight Core <= 1.0 carries this weakness at unserialize(), and reaching it takes any authenticated account. A missing authorization check means a function is reachable by anyone who can reach the endpoint, because the code never asks whether the caller is allowed to perform the action.
Any user who can reach the endpoint gets to run an action reserved for higher-privileged roles, from reading protected data to changing settings or content. No fixed build of this plugin is recorded for Insight Core yet, so installs running <= 1.0 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?
Because it turns on account access, WordSec's login security is the relevant layer: role-based two-factor, captcha and brute-force limits raise the cost of getting the account this needs. No patched version is recorded yet, which is the case where a filtering layer matters most, because there is nothing to update to.
- Login Security
- Alerts
External References
Vulnerability data © Defiant, Inc., provided under the Wordfence Intelligence T&C