Simple Basic Contact Form <= 20220207 - Authenticated (Administrator+) Stored Cross-Site Scripting
Strategic Overview
- Status
- Patched in 20221201
- Affected Plugin
- Simple Basic Contact Form
- Affected Version
<= 20220207- CVSS
- 5.5Medium
- Weakness type
- CWE-79 · Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
- CVE
CVE-2022-4226
At a glance
CVE-2022-4226 is a medium-severity Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in the Simple Basic Contact Form WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 20220207. It carries a CVSS score of 5.5 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires an authenticated account at Administrator level or above. The issue is fixed in version 20221201; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed December 2022, reported by zhangyunpei.
Vulnerability Overview
The Simple Basic Contact Form plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Stored Cross-Site Scripting via several of its settings parameters in versions up to, and including, 20220207 due to insufficient input sanitization and output escaping. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with administrator-level permissions and above, to inject arbitrary web scripts in pages that will execute whenever a user accesses an injected page. This only affects multi-site installations and installations where unfiltered_html has been disabled.
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 interaction from a victim user.
CWE-79: Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
Reaching this weakness in Simple Basic Contact Form <= 20220207 takes an account at Administrator level or above. Cross-site scripting happens when input from a request is written into a page without being escaped for the context it lands in, so the browser parses attacker-supplied text as markup or script.
Injected script runs with the privileges of whoever views the affected page, which is how these flaws turn into administrator session theft, silent account creation or persistent backdoors in page content. For Simple Basic Contact Form the fix is 20221201: builds <= 20220207 are affected, anything from 20221201 onward is not.
Remediation
Update to version 20221201, or a newer patched version
How does WordSec protect against this?
An attacker needs Administrator access first, so the firewall sees the attempt as traffic from a logged-in account: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Simple Basic Contact Form 20221201 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.
- Firewall
- Alerts
External References
Related records
Same weakness class
Other vulnerabilities in Simple Basic Contact Form
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