CVE-2021-24979

Paid Memberships Pro <= 2.6.5 - Reflected Cross-Site Scripting

2021-11-23 00:00

Strategic Overview

Status: Patched in 2.6.6
Affected Plugin: Paid Memberships Pro – Content Restriction, User Registration, & Paid Subscriptions
Affected Version: < 2.6.6
CVSS: 6.1Medium
Weakness type: CWE-79 · Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
CVE: CVE-2021-24979

View all Paid Memberships Pro – Content Restriction, User Registration, & Paid Subscriptions vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2021-24979 is a medium-severity Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in the Paid Memberships Pro WordPress plugin, affecting versions < 2.6.6. It carries a CVSS score of 6.1 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 2.6.6; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed November 2021, reported by ZhongFu Su.

Vulnerability Overview

The Paid Memberships Pro WordPress plugin before 2.6.6 does not escape the s parameter before outputting it back in an attribute in an admin page, leading to a Reflected Cross-Site Scripting

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

Reaching this weakness in Paid Memberships Pro < 2.6.6 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 Paid Memberships Pro the fix is 2.6.6: builds < 2.6.6 are affected, anything from 2.6.6 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 2.6.6, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Paid Memberships Pro: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Paid Memberships Pro 2.6.6 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

Firewall
Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2021-24979 https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/7848e904-b521-479b-bf7e-d695ad0163b0 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2021-24979

Related records

Same weakness class

Other vulnerabilities in Paid Memberships Pro – Content Restriction, User Registration, & Paid Subscriptions

CVSS Vector

6.1

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

Base

Attack VectorNetwork
Attack ComplexityLow
Privileges RequiredNone
User InteractionRequired
ScopeChanged
ConfidentialityLow
IntegrityLow
AvailabilityNone

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