CVE-2023-30478

Newsletters <= 4.8.8 - Cross-Site Request Forgery

2023-04-13 00:00

Strategic Overview

Status: Patched in 4.8.9
Affected Plugin: Newsletters
Affected Version: <= 4.8.8
CVSS: 5.4Medium
Weakness type: CWE-352 · Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
CVE: CVE-2023-30478

At a glance

CVE-2023-30478 is a medium-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the Newsletters WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 4.8.8. It carries a CVSS score of 5.4 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 4.8.9; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed April 2023, reported by Rio Darmawan.

Vulnerability Overview

The Newsletters plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Cross-Site Request Forgery in versions up to, and including, 4.8.8. This is due to missing nonce validation on several cases in several functions like admin_groups() and admin_forms(). This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to manipulate forms and groups via a forged request, granted they can trick a site administrator into performing an action such as clicking on a link.

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-352: Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)

Newsletters <= 4.8.8 carries this weakness at admin_groups(), and reaching it 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 Newsletters the fix is 4.8.9: builds <= 4.8.8 are affected, anything from 4.8.9 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 4.8.9, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Newsletters: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Newsletters 4.8.9 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

Firewall
Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2023-30478 https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/0cd6474f-72e1-4ec2-a056-3c05a0dfa173 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-30478

Related records

Same weakness class

Other vulnerabilities in Newsletters

CVSS Vector

5.4

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

Base

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

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