CVE-2020-36744

NotificationX <= 1.8.2 - Cross-Site Request Forgery Bypass

2020-09-16 00:00
Jerome Bruandet

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 1.8.3
Affected Plugin
NotificationX – FOMO, Live Sales Notification, WooCommerce Sales Popup, GDPR, Social Proof, Announcement Banner & Floating Notification Bar
Affected Version
< 1.8.3
CVSS
4.3Medium
Weakness type
CWE-352 · Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
CVE
CVE-2020-36744
View all NotificationX – FOMO, Live Sales Notification, WooCommerce Sales Popup, GDPR, Social Proof, Announcement Banner & Floating Notification Bar vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2020-36744 is a medium-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the NotificationX WordPress plugin, affecting versions < 1.8.3. It carries a CVSS score of 4.3 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 1.8.3; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed September 2020, reported by Jerome Bruandet.

Vulnerability Overview

The NotificationX plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Cross-Site Request Forgery in versions up to, and including, 1.8.2. This is due to missing or incorrect nonce validation on the generate_conversions() function. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to generate conversions 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)

NotificationX < 1.8.3 carries this weakness at generate_conversions(), 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 NotificationX the fix is 1.8.3: builds < 1.8.3 are affected, anything from 1.8.3 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 1.8.3, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to NotificationX: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: NotificationX 1.8.3 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Firewall
  • Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2020-36744https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/3ebe7680-a76d-4178-a729-f0d79d861912https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-36744

Related records

Vulnerability data © Defiant, Inc., provided under the Wordfence Intelligence T&C