CVE-2022-40671

Rate my Post – WP Rating System <= 3.3.4 - Cross-Site Request Forgery

2022-09-14 00:00
Nguy Minh Tuan

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 3.3.5
Affected Plugin
Rate My Post – Star Rating Plugin by FeedbackWP
Affected Version
<= 3.3.4
CVSS
8.8High
Weakness type
CWE-352 · Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
CVE
CVE-2022-40671
View all Rate My Post – Star Rating Plugin by FeedbackWP vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2022-40671 is a high-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the Rate My Post WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 3.3.4. It carries a CVSS score of 8.8 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity; high confidentiality, integrity, availability impact). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 3.3.5; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed September 2022, reported by Nguy Minh Tuan.

Vulnerability Overview

The Rate my Post plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Cross-Site Request Forgery in versions up to, and including, 3.3.4. This is due to missing or incorrect nonce validation on the has_valid_nonce function. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to vote on posts, via forged request granted they can trick a site user 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. 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 Rate My Post <= 3.3.4 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 Rate My Post the fix is 3.3.5: builds <= 3.3.4 are affected, anything from 3.3.5 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 3.3.5, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Rate My Post: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Rate My Post 3.3.5 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Firewall
  • Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2022-40671https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/b4e0ee4f-fc45-4682-9ed4-aa1301205bb4https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-40671

Related records

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