CVE-2022-4027

Simple:Press <= 6.8 - Unauthenticated Stored Cross-Site Scripting via Forum Replies

2022-11-29 00:00

Strategic Overview

Status: Patched in 6.8.1
Affected Plugin: Simple:Press Forum
Affected Version: <= 6.8
CVSS: 7.2High
Weakness type: CWE-79 · Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
CVE: CVE-2022-4027

View all Simple:Press Forum vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2022-4027 is a high-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 7.2 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). 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 Stored Cross-Site Scripting via the 'postitem' parameter manipulated during a forum response in versions up to, and including, 6.8 due to insufficient input sanitization and output escaping that makes injecting object and embed tags possible. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to inject arbitrary web scripts in pages when responding to forum threads that will execute whenever a user accesses an injected page.

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

Simple:Press Forum <= 6.8 carries this weakness at postitem, and reaching it takes no account at all. 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?

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. 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
Login Security
Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2022-4027 https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/4707fcf6-ad11-4ffc-ba56-30f6571e3d9e https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-4027

Related records

Same weakness class

Other vulnerabilities in Simple:Press Forum

CVSS Vector

7.2

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N

Base

Attack VectorNetwork
Attack ComplexityLow
Privileges RequiredNone
User InteractionNone
ScopeChanged
ConfidentialityLow
IntegrityLow
AvailabilityNone

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