CVE-2021-24728

Membership & Content Restriction – Paid Member Subscriptions <= 2.4.1 - SQL Injection

2021-08-06 00:00
Martin Vierula

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 2.4.2
Affected Plugin
Paid Membership Subscriptions – Effortless Memberships, Recurring Payments & Content Restriction
Affected Version
<= 2.4.1
CVSS
8.8High
Weakness type
CWE-89 · Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an SQL Command ('SQL Injection')
CVE
CVE-2021-24728
View all Paid Membership Subscriptions – Effortless Memberships, Recurring Payments & Content Restriction vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2021-24728 is a high-severity Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an SQL Command ('SQL Injection') vulnerability in the Paid Membership Subscriptions WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 2.4.1. It carries a CVSS score of 8.8 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity; high confidentiality, integrity, availability impact). The issue is fixed in version 2.4.2; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed August 2021, reported by Martin Vierula.

Vulnerability Overview

The Membership & Content Restriction – Paid Member Subscriptions WordPress plugin before 2.4.2 did not sanitise, validate or escape its order and orderby parameters before using them in SQL statement, leading to authenticated SQL injections in the Members and Payments pages.

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 interaction from a victim user. A successful exploit has high impact on confidentiality, integrity, availability — full site compromise territory.

CWE-89: Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an SQL Command ('SQL Injection')

Reaching this weakness in Paid Membership Subscriptions <= 2.4.1 takes a caller who can reach the endpoint. SQL injection happens when request data is concatenated into a query instead of being bound as a parameter, letting an attacker change the structure of the statement rather than just its values.

A working injection can read any table the database user can see, which on a WordPress install means user records, password hashes and session or API secrets stored in options. For Paid Membership Subscriptions the fix is 2.4.2: builds <= 2.4.1 are affected, anything from 2.4.2 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 2.4.2, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Paid Membership Subscriptions: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Paid Membership Subscriptions 2.4.2 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Firewall
  • Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2021-24728https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/52203b9c-7629-4969-8d2d-eb1ef33d160chttps://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2021-24728

Related records

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