CVE-2022-4029

Simple:Press <= 6.8 - Reflected Cross-Site Scripting via Cookie Value

2022-11-29 00:00
Luca Greeb

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 6.8.1
Affected Plugin
Simple:Press Forum
Affected Version
<= 6.8
CVSS
4.7Medium
Weakness type
CWE-79 · Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
CVE
CVE-2022-4029
View all Simple:Press Forum vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2022-4029 is a medium-severity Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in the Simple:Press Forum WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 6.8. It carries a CVSS score of 4.7 (reachable over the network). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 6.8.1; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed November 2022, reported by Luca Greeb.

Vulnerability Overview

The Simple:Press plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Reflected Cross-Site Scripting via the 'sforum_[md5 hash of the WordPress URL]' cookie value in versions up to, and including, 6.8 due to insufficient input sanitization and output escaping. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to inject arbitrary web scripts in pages that execute if they can successfully trick a user into performing an action such as clicking on a link. This would be highly complex to exploit as it would require the attacker to set the cookie a cookie for the targeted user.

Technical Analysis

The vector marks this flaw as remotely reachable over the network, and no privileges on the target site.

CWE-79: Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')

Reaching this weakness in Simple:Press Forum <= 6.8 takes a caller who can reach the endpoint. 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:Press Forum the fix is 6.8.1: builds <= 6.8 are affected, anything from 6.8.1 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 6.8.1, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Simple:Press Forum: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Simple:Press Forum 6.8.1 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Firewall
  • Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2022-4029https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/55a57b5f-2f87-4060-b1c2-77086f695ddahttps://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-4029

Related records

Vulnerability data © Defiant, Inc., provided under the Wordfence Intelligence T&C