CVE-2021-24146

Modern Events Calendar Lite <= 5.16.4 - Unauthenticated Events Export

2021-01-29 00:00
Nguyen Van Khanh

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 5.16.5
Affected Plugin
Modern Events Calendar Lite
Affected Version
<= 5.16.4
CVSS
7.5High
Weakness type
CWE-284 · Improper Access Control
CVE
CVE-2021-24146
View all Modern Events Calendar Lite vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2021-24146 is a high-severity Improper Access Control vulnerability in the Modern Events Calendar Lite WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 5.16.4. It carries a CVSS score of 7.5 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity; high confidentiality impact). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 5.16.5; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed January 2021, reported by Nguyen Van Khanh.

Vulnerability Overview

Lack of authorisation checks in the Modern Events Calendar Lite WordPress plugin, versions before 5.16.5, did not properly restrict access to the export files, allowing unauthenticated users to exports all events data in CSV or XML format for example.

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, and no interaction from a victim user. A successful exploit has high impact on confidentiality.

CWE-284: Improper Access Control

Reaching this weakness in Modern Events Calendar Lite <= 5.16.4 takes no account at all. Improper access control means the code decides what a caller may do using something other than their actual permissions, so the decision can be wrong without any check appearing to be missing.

Whoever can shape the request decides the answer, so the protected action runs for callers the code never meant to allow. For Modern Events Calendar Lite the fix is 5.16.5: builds <= 5.16.4 are affected, anything from 5.16.5 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 5.16.5, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

This one needs no account at all, which puts it outside what login hardening can reach; WordSec's login security narrows the account-level paths around it, and the firewall is what inspects the request itself. None of that substitutes for the fix: Modern Events Calendar Lite 5.16.5 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Login Security
  • Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2021-24146https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/8e361473-8ed6-41d0-b409-2436189c1120https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2021-24146

Related records

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