Taboola <= 2.0.1 - Cross-Site Request Forgery to Plugin Settings Update
Strategic Overview
- Status
- Patched in 20.2
- Affected Plugin
- Taboola
- Affected Version
<= 2.0.1- CVSS
- 4.3Medium
- Weakness type
- CWE-352 · Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
- CVE
CVE-2023-38398
At a glance
CVE-2023-38398 is a medium-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the Taboola WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 2.0.1. 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 20.2; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed July 2023, reported by Nguyen Xuan Chien.
Vulnerability Overview
The Taboola plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Cross-Site Request Forgery in versions up to, and including, 2.0.1. This is due to missing or incorrect nonce validation on the admin_taboola_settings() function. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to update the plugin's settings 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)
Taboola <= 2.0.1 carries this weakness at admin_taboola_settings(), and reaching it 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 Taboola the fix is 20.2: builds <= 2.0.1 are affected, anything from 20.2 onward is not.
Remediation
Update to version 20.2, or a newer patched version
How does WordSec protect against this?
The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Taboola: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Taboola 20.2 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