CVE-2021-4434

Social Warfare <= 3.5.2 - Remote Code Execution

2021-04-29 00:00
Raed Ahsan

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 3.5.3
Affected Plugin
Social Sharing Plugin – Social Warfare
Affected Version
< 3.5.3
CVSS
10.0Critical
Weakness type
CWE-94 · Improper Control of Generation of Code ('Code Injection')
CVE
CVE-2021-4434
View all Social Sharing Plugin – Social Warfare vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2021-4434 is a critical-severity Improper Control of Generation of Code ('Code Injection') vulnerability in the Social Sharing Plugin WordPress plugin, affecting versions < 3.5.3. It carries a CVSS score of 10.0 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity; high confidentiality, integrity, availability impact). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 3.5.3; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed April 2021, reported by Raed Ahsan.

Vulnerability Overview

The Social Warfare plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Remote Code Execution in versions up to, and including, 3.5.2 via the 'swp_url' parameter. This allows attackers to execute code on the server.

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. A successful exploit has high impact on confidentiality, integrity, availability — full site compromise territory.

CWE-94: Improper Control of Generation of Code ('Code Injection')

Social Sharing Plugin < 3.5.3 carries this weakness at swp_url, and reaching it takes a caller who can reach the endpoint. 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 Social Sharing Plugin the fix is 3.5.3: builds < 3.5.3 are affected, anything from 3.5.3 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 3.5.3, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Social Sharing Plugin: 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: Social Sharing Plugin 3.5.3 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Firewall
  • Scanner
  • Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2021-4434https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/98cf2a10-cc53-4479-87d1-71489f6a8c51https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2021-4434

Related records

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