CVE-2014-6604

Subscribe2 – Form, Email Subscribers & Newsletters <= 10.15 - Stored Cross-Site Scripting

2014-10-01 00:00
Matt Barry

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 10.16
Affected Plugin
Subscribe2 – Form, Email Subscribers & Newsletters
Affected Version
< 10.16
CVSS
6.1Medium
Weakness type
CWE-79 · Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
CVE
CVE-2014-6604
View all Subscribe2 – Form, Email Subscribers & Newsletters vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2014-6604 is a medium-severity Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in the Subscribe2 WordPress plugin, affecting versions < 10.16. 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 10.16; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed October 2014, reported by Matt Barry.

Vulnerability Overview

The Subscribe2 – Form, Email Subscribers & Newsletters plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Stored Cross-Site Scripting via the REMOTE_ADDR value in versions up to, and including, 10.15 due to insufficient input sanitization and output escaping. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers with subscriber, or higher privileges access to inject arbitrary web scripts in pages 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.

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

Reaching this weakness in Subscribe2 < 10.16 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 Subscribe2 the fix is 10.16: builds < 10.16 are affected, anything from 10.16 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 10.16, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Subscribe2: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Subscribe2 10.16 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Firewall
  • Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2014-6604https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/7202c0f7-cde7-4588-95f4-367d91f2eb67https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2014-6604

Related records

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