Ultimate Member 1.2.98 - 1.2.997 - Reflected Cross-Site Scripting

2015-06-18 00:00
James Hooker

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 1.3.0
Affected Plugin
Ultimate Member – User Profile, Registration, Login, Member Directory, Content Restriction & Membership Plugin
Affected Version
1.2.98 – 1.2.997
CVSS
7.1High
Weakness type
CWE-79 · Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
CVE
CVE pending
View all Ultimate Member – User Profile, Registration, Login, Member Directory, Content Restriction & Membership Plugin vulnerabilities

At a glance

This record tracks a high-severity Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in the Ultimate Member WordPress plugin, affecting versions 1.2.98 – 1.2.997. It carries a CVSS score of 7.1 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 1.3.0; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed June 2015, reported by James Hooker.

Vulnerability Overview

The Ultimate Member plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Reflected Cross-Site Scripting via the ‘url’ parameter in versions 1.2.98 through 1.2.997 due to insufficient input sanitization and output escaping. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to inject arbitrary web scripts in pages that execute if they can successfully trick a user 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-79: Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')

Ultimate Member 1.2.98 – 1.2.997 carries this weakness at url, and reaching it 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 Ultimate Member the fix is 1.3.0: builds 1.2.98 – 1.2.997 are affected, anything from 1.3.0 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 1.3.0, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Ultimate Member: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Ultimate Member 1.3.0 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Firewall
  • Alerts

External References

https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/461d5d5a-7bc2-4855-bc40-0edb9c538c33

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