CVE-2021-24852

MouseWheel Smooth Scroll <= 5.6 - Plugin's Setting Update via Cross-Site Request Forgery

2021-10-18 00:00

Strategic Overview

Status: Patched in 5.7
Affected Plugin: MouseWheel Smooth Scroll
Affected Version: <= 5.6
CVSS: 6.5Medium
Weakness type: CWE-352 · Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
CVE: CVE-2021-24852

View all MouseWheel Smooth Scroll vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2021-24852 is a medium-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the MouseWheel Smooth Scroll WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 5.6. It carries a CVSS score of 6.5 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity; high integrity impact). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 5.7; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed October 2021, reported by apple502j.

Vulnerability Overview

The MouseWheel Smooth Scroll WordPress plugin before 5.7 does not have CSRF check in place on its settings page, which could allow attackers to make a logged in admin change them via a CSRF attack

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. A successful exploit has high impact on integrity.

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

Reaching this weakness in MouseWheel Smooth Scroll <= 5.6 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 MouseWheel Smooth Scroll the fix is 5.7: builds <= 5.6 are affected, anything from 5.7 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 5.7, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to MouseWheel Smooth Scroll: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: MouseWheel Smooth Scroll 5.7 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

Firewall
Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2021-24852 https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/487d94e8-e4f1-4da8-914c-96157f8ae14d https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2021-24852

CVSS Vector

6.5

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

Base

Attack VectorNetwork
Attack ComplexityLow
Privileges RequiredNone
User InteractionRequired
ScopeUnchanged
ConfidentialityNone
IntegrityHigh
AvailabilityNone

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