CVE-2014-7957

Pods <= 2.4.3 - Multiple Cross-Site Request Forgery

2015-01-12 00:00
Pietro Oliva

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 2.5
Affected Plugin
Pods – Custom Content Types and Fields
Affected Version
<= 2.4.3
CVSS
9.6Critical
Weakness type
CWE-352 · Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
CVE
CVE-2014-7957
View all Pods – Custom Content Types and Fields vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2014-7957 is a critical-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the Pods WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 2.4.3. It carries a CVSS score of 9.6 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity; high confidentiality, integrity, availability impact). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 2.5; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed January 2015, reported by Pietro Oliva.

Vulnerability Overview

Multiple cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerabilities in the Pods plugin before 2.5 for WordPress allow remote attackers to hijack the authentication of administrators for requests that (1) conduct cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks via the toggled parameter in a toggle action in the pods-components page to wp-admin/admin.php, (2) delete a pod in a delete action in the pods page to wp-admin/admin.php, (3) reset pod settings and data via the pods_reset parameter in the pod-settings page to wp-admin/admin.php, (4) deactivate and reset pod data via the pods_reset_deactivate parameter in the pod-settings page to wp-admin/admin.php, (5) delete the admin role via the id parameter in a delete action in the pods-component-roles-and-capabilities page to wp-admin/admin.php, or (6) enable "roles and capabilities" in a toggle action in the pods-components page to wp-admin/admin.php.

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 Pods <= 2.4.3 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 Pods the fix is 2.5: builds <= 2.4.3 are affected, anything from 2.5 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 2.5, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Pods: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Pods 2.5 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Firewall
  • Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2014-7957https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/19b4a27d-d9de-4567-86cd-8ec821ee299ahttps://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2014-7957

Related records

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