Subscribers Text Counter <= 1.7 - Cross-Site Request Forgery to Settings Update and Cross-Site Scripting
Strategic Overview
- Status
- Patched in 1.7.1
- Affected Plugin
- Subscribers Text Counter
- Affected Version
<= 1.7- CVSS
- 4.3Medium
- Weakness type
- CWE-352 · Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
- CVE
CVE-2023-3356
At a glance
CVE-2023-3356 is a medium-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the Subscribers Text Counter WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 1.7. It carries a CVSS score of 4.3 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 1.7.1; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed August 2023, reported by Pallab Jyoti Borah.
Vulnerability Overview
The Subscribers Text Counter plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Cross-Site Request Forgery in versions up to, and including, 1.7. This is due to missing nonce validation in the subscribers-text-counter-admin.php file. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to modify the plugin's settings and inject malicious web scripts via a forged request granted they can trick a site administrator into performing an action such as clicking on a link.
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-352: Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
Reaching this weakness in Subscribers Text Counter <= 1.7 takes a caller who can reach the endpoint. Cross-site request forgery abuses the fact that browsers attach a victim's cookies to any request, so a state-changing action that only checks who you are, not whether you meant to act, can be triggered from another site.
An attacker who gets a logged-in user to load a crafted page can perform that action as them, with the impact scaling to whatever the victim's role is allowed to do. For Subscribers Text Counter the fix is 1.7.1: builds <= 1.7 are affected, anything from 1.7.1 onward is not.
Remediation
Update to version 1.7.1, or a newer patched version
How does WordSec protect against this?
The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Subscribers Text Counter: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Subscribers Text Counter 1.7.1 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.
- Firewall
- Alerts
External References
Vulnerability data © Defiant, Inc., provided under the Wordfence Intelligence T&C