Strategic Overview
- Status
- Patched in 1.4
- Affected Plugin
- Smooth Page Scroll Up/Down Buttons
- Affected Version
<= 1.3- CVSS
- 4.8Medium
- Weakness type
- CWE-79 · Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
- CVE
CVE-2021-24331
At a glance
CVE-2021-24331 is a medium-severity Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in the Smooth Page Scroll Up/Down Buttons WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 1.3. It carries a CVSS score of 4.8 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). The issue is fixed in version 1.4; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed April 2021, reported by R3N0.
Vulnerability Overview
The Smooth Scroll Page Up/Down Buttons WordPress plugin before 1.4 did not properly sanitise and validate its settings, such as psb_distance, psb_buttonsize, psb_speed, only validating them client side. This could allow high privilege users (such as admin) to set XSS payloads in them
Technical Analysis
The vector marks this flaw as remotely reachable over the network, with low attack complexity — no special timing or configuration is needed.
CWE-79: Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
Reaching this weakness in Smooth Page Scroll Up/Down Buttons <= 1.3 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 Smooth Page Scroll Up/Down Buttons the fix is 1.4: builds <= 1.3 are affected, anything from 1.4 onward is not.
Remediation
Update to version 1.4, or a newer patched version
How does WordSec protect against this?
The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Smooth Page Scroll Up/Down Buttons: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Smooth Page Scroll Up/Down Buttons 1.4 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.
- Firewall
- Alerts
External References
Related records
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