CVE-2021-24586

Per Page Add To Head <= 1.4.3 Cross-Site Request Forgery to Stored Cross-Site Scripting

2021-08-11 00:00
Prashant Karman Patel

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 1.4.4
Affected Plugin
Per page add to head
Affected Version
< 1.4.4
CVSS
8.8High
Weakness type
CWE-352 · Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
CVE
CVE-2021-24586
View all Per page add to head vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2021-24586 is a high-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the Per page add to head WordPress plugin, affecting versions < 1.4.4. It carries a CVSS score of 8.8 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity; high confidentiality, integrity, availability impact). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 1.4.4; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed August 2021, reported by Prashant Karman Patel.

Vulnerability Overview

The Per page add to head WordPress plugin before 1.4.4 is lacking any CSRF check when saving its settings, which could allow attackers to make a logged in admin change them. Furthermore, as the plugin allows arbitrary HTML to be inserted in one of the setting (feature mentioned by the plugin), this could lead to Stored XSS issue which will be triggered either in the backend, frontend or both depending on the payload used.

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. A successful exploit has high impact on confidentiality, integrity, availability — full site compromise territory.

CWE-352: Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)

Reaching this weakness in Per page add to head < 1.4.4 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 Per page add to head the fix is 1.4.4: builds < 1.4.4 are affected, anything from 1.4.4 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 1.4.4, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Per page add to head: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Per page add to head 1.4.4 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Firewall
  • Alerts

External References

Related records

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