Rich Reviews by Starfish <= 1.9.14 - Cross-Site Request Forgery
Strategic Overview
- Status
- Patched in 1.9.15
- Affected Plugin
- Rich Reviews by Starfish
- Affected Version
<= 1.9.14- CVSS
- 8.8High
- Weakness type
- CWE-352 · Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
- CVE
CVE-2021-36861
At a glance
CVE-2021-36861 is a high-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the Rich Reviews by Starfish WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 1.9.14. 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 1.9.15; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed August 2022, reported by Ngo Van Thien.
Vulnerability Overview
The Rich Reviews by Starfish plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Cross-Site Request Forgery in versions up to, and including, 1.9.14. This is due to missing nonce validation on the process_bulk_action() function. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to bulk process reviews 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. A successful exploit has high impact on confidentiality, integrity, availability — full site compromise territory.
CWE-352: Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
Rich Reviews by Starfish <= 1.9.14 carries this weakness at process_bulk_action(), 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 Rich Reviews by Starfish the fix is 1.9.15: builds <= 1.9.14 are affected, anything from 1.9.15 onward is not.
Remediation
Update to version 1.9.15, or a newer patched version
How does WordSec protect against this?
The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Rich Reviews by Starfish: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Rich Reviews by Starfish 1.9.15 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.
- Firewall
- Alerts
External References
Related records
Other vulnerabilities in Rich Reviews by Starfish
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