CVE-2022-1756

Newsletter – Send awesome emails from WordPress <= 7.4.4 - Reflected Cross-Site Scripting

2022-05-23 00:00

Strategic Overview

Status: Patched in 7.4.5
Affected Plugin: Newsletter – Send awesome emails from WordPress
Affected Version: <= 7.4.4
CVSS: 6.1Medium
Weakness type: CWE-79 · Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
CVE: CVE-2022-1756

View all Newsletter – Send awesome emails from WordPress vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2022-1756 is a medium-severity Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in the Newsletter WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 7.4.4. It carries a CVSS score of 6.1 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 7.4.5; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed May 2022, reported by PHYO WIN SHEIN.

Vulnerability Overview

The Newsletter WordPress plugin before 7.4.5 does not sanitize and escape the $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] before echoing it back in admin pages. Although this uses addslashes, and most modern browsers automatically URLEncode requests, this is still vulnerable to Reflected XSS in older browsers such as Internet Explorer 9 or below.

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

Newsletter <= 7.4.4 carries this weakness at REQUEST_URI, and reaching it takes a caller who can reach the endpoint. 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. For Newsletter the fix is 7.4.5: builds <= 7.4.4 are affected, anything from 7.4.5 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 7.4.5, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Newsletter: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Newsletter 7.4.5 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

Firewall
Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2022-1756 https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/e136ab52-a193-430b-b2b2-d7640d009c99 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-1756

Related records

Same weakness class

Other vulnerabilities in Newsletter – Send awesome emails from WordPress

CVSS Vector

6.1

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

Base

Attack VectorNetwork
Attack ComplexityLow
Privileges RequiredNone
User InteractionRequired
ScopeChanged
ConfidentialityLow
IntegrityLow
AvailabilityNone

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