Simple Basic Contact Form <= 20240502 - Unauthenticated Arbitrary Shortcode Execution
Strategic Overview
- Status
- Patched in 20240511
- Affected Plugin
- Simple Basic Contact Form
- Affected Version
<= 20240502- CVSS
- 6.5Medium
- Weakness type
- CWE-94 · Improper Control of Generation of Code ('Code Injection')
- CVE
CVE-2024-4144
At a glance
CVE-2024-4144 is a medium-severity Improper Control of Generation of Code ('Code Injection') vulnerability in the Simple Basic Contact Form WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 20240502. It carries a CVSS score of 6.5 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 20240511; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed May 2024, reported by stealthcopter.
Vulnerability Overview
The Simple Basic Contact Form plugin for WordPress for WordPress is vulnerable to arbitrary shortcode execution in all versions up to, and including, 20240502. This allows unauthenticated attackers to execute arbitrary shortcodes. The severity and exploitability depends on the functionality of other plugins installed in the environment.
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, and no interaction from a victim user.
CWE-94: Improper Control of Generation of Code ('Code Injection')
Reaching this weakness in Simple Basic Contact Form <= 20240502 takes no account at all. Code injection means input from a request reaches a language construct that evaluates code, so the attacker's text is executed rather than treated as data.
The injected code runs with the web server's privileges, giving the attacker the same access to the database and filesystem as WordPress itself. For Simple Basic Contact Form the fix is 20240511: builds <= 20240502 are affected, anything from 20240511 onward is not.
Remediation
Update to version 20240511, or a newer patched version
How does WordSec protect against this?
Requests carrying this pattern arrive without a session, so nothing upstream of the firewall gets a chance to reject them: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. Classes like this one can leave something behind, so the staged malware scanner is the second half: it looks for dropped files and modified code rather than for the request that created them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Simple Basic Contact Form 20240511 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.
- Firewall
- Scanner
- Login Security
External References
Related records
Other vulnerabilities in Simple Basic Contact Form
- 7.2CVE-2026-8172: Simple Basic Contact Form <= 20250114 Stored XSS
CVE-2026-8172 - 6.1CVE-2024-4150: Simple Basic Contact Form <= 20221201 Reflected XSS
CVE-2024-4150 - 5.5CVE-2022-4226: Simple Basic Contact Form <= 20220207 Stored XSS
CVE-2022-4226 - 4.4CVE-2024-12716: Simple Basic Contact Form <= 20240511 Stored XSS
CVE-2024-12716
Vulnerability data © Defiant, Inc., provided under the Wordfence Intelligence T&C