Strategic Overview
- Status
- Patched in 1.3.4
- Affected Plugin
- Personal Dictionary – Vocabulary Games, Memory Games
- Affected Version
< 1.3.4- CVSS
- 9.8Critical
- Weakness type
- CWE-89 · Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an SQL Command ('SQL Injection')
- CVE
CVE-2022-1013
At a glance
CVE-2022-1013 is a critical-severity Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an SQL Command ('SQL Injection') vulnerability in the Personal Dictionary WordPress plugin, affecting versions < 1.3.4. It carries a CVSS score of 9.8 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity; high confidentiality, integrity, availability impact). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 1.3.4; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed April 2022, reported by cydave.
Vulnerability Overview
The Personal Dictionary WordPress plugin before 1.3.4 fails to properly sanitize user supplied POST data before it is being interpolated in an SQL statement and then executed, leading to a blind SQL injection vulnerability.
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, 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 Personal Dictionary < 1.3.4 takes no account at all. 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 Personal Dictionary the fix is 1.3.4: builds < 1.3.4 are affected, anything from 1.3.4 onward is not.
Remediation
Update to version 1.3.4, or a newer patched version
How does WordSec protect against this?
Requests carrying this pattern arrive without a session, so nothing upstream of the firewall gets a chance to reject them: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Personal Dictionary 1.3.4 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.
- Firewall
- Login Security
- Alerts
External References
Vulnerability data © Defiant, Inc., provided under the Wordfence Intelligence T&C