CVE-2015-2220

Ninja Forms Contact Form <= 2.8.8 - Stored Cross-Site Scripting

2014-11-20 00:00
Sergio Navarro

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 2.8.9
Affected Plugin
Ninja Forms – The Contact Form Builder That Grows With You
Affected Version
< 2.8.9
CVSS
7.2High
Weakness type
CWE-79 · Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
CVE
CVE-2015-2220
View all Ninja Forms – The Contact Form Builder That Grows With You vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2015-2220 is a high-severity Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in the Ninja Forms WordPress plugin, affecting versions < 2.8.9. It carries a CVSS score of 7.2 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 2.8.9; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed November 2014, reported by Sergio Navarro.

Vulnerability Overview

Multiple cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities in the Ninja Forms plugin before 2.8.9 for WordPress allow (1) remote attackers to inject arbitrary web script or HTML via the ninja_forms_field_1 parameter in a ninja_forms_ajax_submit action to wp-admin/admin-ajax.php or (2) remote administrators to inject arbitrary web script or HTML via the fields[1] parameter to wp-admin/post.php.

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.

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

Reaching this weakness in Ninja Forms < 2.8.9 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 Ninja Forms the fix is 2.8.9: builds < 2.8.9 are affected, anything from 2.8.9 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 2.8.9, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Ninja Forms: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Ninja Forms 2.8.9 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Firewall
  • Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2015-2220https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/be31866c-7490-4be2-9a4d-2a3771c6fea1https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2015-2220

Related records

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