CVE-2021-24619

Per Page Add to Head <= 1.4.4 - Authenticated (Admin+) Stored Cross-Site Scripting

2021-08-11 00:00
Prashant Karman Patel

Strategic Overview

Status
Unpatched
Affected Plugin
Per page add to head
Affected Version
<= 1.4.4
CVSS
4.8Medium
Weakness type
CWE-79 · Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
CVE
CVE-2021-24619
View all Per page add to head vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2021-24619 is a medium-severity Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in the Per page add to head WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 1.4.4. It carries a CVSS score of 4.8 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires an authenticated account at Admin level or above. No fixed release has been reported yet; treat installations running this software as exposed. Disclosed August 2021, reported by Prashant Karman Patel.

Vulnerability Overview

The Per page add to head WordPress plugin through 1.4.4 does not properly sanitise one of its setting, allowing malicious HTML to be inserted by high privilege users even when the unfiltered_html capability is disallowed, which could lead to Cross-Site Scripting issues.

Technical Analysis

The vector marks this flaw as remotely reachable over the network, with low attack complexity — no special timing or configuration is needed.

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

Reaching this weakness in Per page add to head <= 1.4.4 takes an account at Admin level or above. 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. No fixed build of this plugin is recorded for Per page add to head yet, so installs running <= 1.4.4 stay exposed until the vendor ships one.

Remediation

No known patch available. Please review the vulnerability's details in depth and employ mitigations based on your organization's risk tolerance. It may be best to uninstall the affected software and find a replacement.

How does WordSec protect against this?

An attacker needs Admin access first, so the firewall sees the attempt as traffic from a logged-in account: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. No patched version is recorded yet, which is the case where a filtering layer matters most, because there is nothing to update to.

  • Firewall
  • Alerts

External References

Related records

Other vulnerabilities in Per page add to head

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