CVE-2016-1209

Ninja Forms Contact Form 2.9.36 - 2.9.42 - Unauthenticated Arbitrary File Upload

2016-05-05 00:00
James Golovich

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 2.9.42.1
Affected Plugin
Ninja Forms – The Contact Form Builder That Grows With You
Affected Version
2.9.36 – 2.9.42
CVSS
9.8Critical
Weakness type
CWE-434 · Unrestricted Upload of File with Dangerous Type
CVE
CVE-2016-1209
View all Ninja Forms – The Contact Form Builder That Grows With You vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2016-1209 is a critical-severity Unrestricted Upload of File with Dangerous Type vulnerability in the Ninja Forms WordPress plugin, affecting versions 2.9.36 – 2.9.42. It carries a CVSS score of 9.8 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity; high confidentiality, integrity, availability impact). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 2.9.42.1; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed May 2016, reported by James Golovich.

Vulnerability Overview

Versions 2.9.36 to 2.9.42 of the Ninja Forms plugin contain an unauthenticated file upload vulnerability, allowing guests to upload arbitrary PHP code that can be executed in the context of the web server.

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, integrity, availability — full site compromise territory.

CWE-434: Unrestricted Upload of File with Dangerous Type

Reaching this weakness in Ninja Forms 2.9.36 – 2.9.42 takes no account at all. An unrestricted file upload lets a caller store a file whose type or destination the application does not properly constrain.

If an uploaded file lands anywhere the server will execute, the flaw becomes remote code execution and the site should be treated as fully compromised. For Ninja Forms the fix is 2.9.42.1: builds 2.9.36 – 2.9.42 are affected, anything from 2.9.42.1 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 2.9.42.1, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

Requests carrying this pattern arrive without a session, so nothing upstream of the firewall gets a chance to reject them: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. Classes like this one can leave something behind, so the staged malware scanner is the second half: it looks for dropped files and modified code rather than for the request that created them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Ninja Forms 2.9.42.1 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Firewall
  • Scanner
  • Login Security

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2016-1209https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/0f36a924-6a68-40ff-bf1a-9ebcad1c2fc6https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2016-1209

Related records

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