CVE-2023-23808

Sponsors Carousel <= 4.02 - Authenticated (Admin+) Stored Cross-Site Scripting in show

2023-02-20 00:00
Rio Darmawan

Strategic Overview

Status
Unpatched
Affected Plugin
Sponsors Carousel
Affected Version
<= 4.0.2
CVSS
4.4Medium
Weakness type
CWE-79 · Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
CVE
CVE-2023-23808
View all Sponsors Carousel vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2023-23808 is a medium-severity Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in the Sponsors Carousel WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 4.0.2. It carries a CVSS score of 4.4 (reachable over the network). Exploitation requires an authenticated account at Admin level or above. No fixed release has been reported yet; treat installations running this software as exposed. Disclosed February 2023, reported by Rio Darmawan.

Vulnerability Overview

The Sponsors Carousel plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Stored Cross-Site Scripting via the an image title in versions up to, and including, 4.02 due to insufficient input sanitization and output escaping on the show function. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with administrator-level privileges, to inject arbitrary web scripts in pages that will execute whenever a user accesses an injected page. This only affects multi-site installations and installations where unfiltered_html has been disabled.

Technical Analysis

The vector marks this flaw as remotely reachable over the network, and no interaction from a victim user.

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

Reaching this weakness in Sponsors Carousel <= 4.0.2 takes an account at Admin level or above. 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. No fixed build of this plugin is recorded for Sponsors Carousel yet, so installs running <= 4.0.2 stay exposed until the vendor ships one.

Remediation

No known patch available. Please review the vulnerability's details in depth and employ mitigations based on your organization's risk tolerance. It may be best to uninstall the affected software and find a replacement.

How does WordSec protect against this?

An attacker needs Admin access first, so the firewall sees the attempt as traffic from a logged-in account: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. No patched version is recorded yet, which is the case where a filtering layer matters most, because there is nothing to update to.

  • Firewall
  • Alerts

External References

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