CVE-2020-8549

Strong Testimonials <= 2.40.0 - Stored Cross Site Scripting

2020-02-01 00:00

Strategic Overview

Status: Patched in 2.40.1
Affected Plugin: Strong Testimonials
Affected Version: <= 2.40.0
CVSS: 6.1Medium
Weakness type: CWE-79 · Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
CVE: CVE-2020-8549

View all Strong Testimonials vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2020-8549 is a medium-severity Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in the Strong Testimonials WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 2.40.0. It carries a CVSS score of 6.1 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 2.40.1; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed February 2020, reported by Jinson Varghese Behanan.

Vulnerability Overview

Stored XSS in the Strong Testimonials plugin before 2.40.1 for WordPress can result in an attacker performing malicious actions such as stealing session tokens.

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.

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

Reaching this weakness in Strong Testimonials <= 2.40.0 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 Strong Testimonials the fix is 2.40.1: builds <= 2.40.0 are affected, anything from 2.40.1 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 2.40.1, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Strong Testimonials: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Strong Testimonials 2.40.1 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

Firewall
Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2020-8549 https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/9832c598-aa12-4a98-8e0f-643ecbe75839 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-8549

Related records

Same weakness class

Other vulnerabilities in Strong Testimonials

CVSS Vector

6.1

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

Base

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

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