Radio Buttons for Taxonomies <= 2.0.5 - Cross-Site Request Forgery Bypass
Strategic Overview
- Status
- Patched in 2.0.6
- Affected Plugin
- Radio Buttons for Taxonomies
- Affected Version
< 2.0.6- CVSS
- 4.3Medium
- Weakness type
- CWE-352 · Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
- CVE
CVE-2020-36740
At a glance
CVE-2020-36740 is a medium-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the Radio Buttons for Taxonomies WordPress plugin, affecting versions < 2.0.6. It carries a CVSS score of 4.3 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 2.0.6; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed September 2020, reported by Jerome Bruandet.
Vulnerability Overview
The Radio Buttons for Taxonomies plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Cross-Site Request Forgery in versions up to, and including, 2.0.5. This is due to missing or incorrect nonce validation on the save_single_term() function. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to save terms 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)
Radio Buttons for Taxonomies < 2.0.6 carries this weakness at save_single_term(), 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 Radio Buttons for Taxonomies the fix is 2.0.6: builds < 2.0.6 are affected, anything from 2.0.6 onward is not.
Remediation
Update to version 2.0.6, or a newer patched version
How does WordSec protect against this?
The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Radio Buttons for Taxonomies: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Radio Buttons for Taxonomies 2.0.6 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.
- Firewall
- Alerts
External References
Vulnerability data © Defiant, Inc., provided under the Wordfence Intelligence T&C