CVE-2020-36173

Ninja Forms Contact Form – The Drag and Drop Form Builder for WordPress <= 3.4.27.1 - Stored Cross-Site Scripting

2020-09-20 00:00

Strategic Overview

Status: Patched in 3.4.28
Affected Plugin: Ninja Forms – The Contact Form Builder That Grows With You
Affected Version: <= 3.4.27.1
CVSS: 6.5Medium
Weakness type: CWE-79 · Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
CVE: CVE-2020-36173

View all Ninja Forms – The Contact Form Builder That Grows With You vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2020-36173 is a medium-severity Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in the Ninja Forms WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 3.4.27.1. It carries a CVSS score of 6.5 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 3.4.28; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed September 2020.

Vulnerability Overview

The Ninja Forms plugin before 3.4.28 for WordPress lacks escaping for submissions-table fields.

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 <= 3.4.27.1 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 3.4.28: builds <= 3.4.27.1 are affected, anything from 3.4.28 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 3.4.28, 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 3.4.28 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

Firewall
Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2020-36173 https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/c35efa26-9400-47f1-80c3-e86ca29c6b47 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-36173

Related records

Same weakness class

Other vulnerabilities in Ninja Forms – The Contact Form Builder That Grows With You

CVSS Vector

6.5

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

Base

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

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