CVE-2023-23974

Quick Event Manager <= 9.7.4 - Cross-Site Request Forgery

2023-01-20 00:00
yuyudhn

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 9.7.5
Affected Plugin
Quick Event Manager
Affected Version
<= 9.7.4
CVSS
6.3Medium
Weakness type
CWE-352 · Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
CVE
CVE-2023-23974
View all Quick Event Manager vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2023-23974 is a medium-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the Quick Event Manager WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 9.7.4. It carries a CVSS score of 6.3 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 9.7.5; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed January 2023, reported by yuyudhn.

Vulnerability Overview

The Quick Event Manager plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Cross-Site Request Forgery in versions up to, and including, 9.7.4. This is due to missing nonce validation on several calls in the qem_messages() function. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to manage and alter registration settings that should be intended only for site administrators 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)

Quick Event Manager <= 9.7.4 carries this weakness at qem_messages(), 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 Quick Event Manager the fix is 9.7.5: builds <= 9.7.4 are affected, anything from 9.7.5 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 9.7.5, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Quick Event Manager: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Quick Event Manager 9.7.5 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Firewall
  • Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2023-23974https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/d26e8b21-fa9e-4dfe-a095-5c9f74d968f4https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-23974

Related records

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