Publish to Schedule <= 4.4.2 - Cross-Site Request Forgery leading to Plugin Option Changes
Strategic Overview
- Status
- Patched in 4.5.4
- Affected Plugin
- Publish to Schedule
- Affected Version
<= 4.4.2- CVSS
- 5.4Medium
- Weakness type
- CWE-352 · Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
- CVE
CVE-2023-25994
At a glance
CVE-2023-25994 is a medium-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the Publish to Schedule WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 4.4.2. It carries a CVSS score of 5.4 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 4.5.4; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed February 2023, reported by Rio Darmawan.
Vulnerability Overview
The Publish to Schedule plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Cross-Site Request Forgery in versions up to, and including, 4.4.2. This is due to missing or incorrect nonce validation on the 'pts_options_page' function. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to update and view any of the plugin options via a forged request granted they can trick a site administrator into performing an action such as clicking on a link.
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-352: Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
Publish to Schedule <= 4.4.2 carries this weakness at pts_options_page, and reaching it 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 Publish to Schedule the fix is 4.5.4: builds <= 4.4.2 are affected, anything from 4.5.4 onward is not.
Remediation
Update to version 4.5.4, or a newer patched version
How does WordSec protect against this?
The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Publish to Schedule: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Publish to Schedule 4.5.4 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.
- Firewall
- Alerts
External References
Related records
Other vulnerabilities in Publish to Schedule
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