CVE-2024-8520

Ultimate Member <= 2.8.6 - Cross-Site Request Forgery to Membership Status Change

2024-10-03 00:00

Strategic Overview

Status: Patched in 2.8.7
Affected Plugin: Ultimate Member – User Profile, Registration, Login, Member Directory, Content Restriction & Membership Plugin
Affected Version: <= 2.8.6
CVSS: 5.3Medium
Weakness type: CWE-352 · Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
CVE: CVE-2024-8520

View all Ultimate Member – User Profile, Registration, Login, Member Directory, Content Restriction & Membership Plugin vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2024-8520 is a medium-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the Ultimate Member WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 2.8.6. It carries a CVSS score of 5.3 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 2.8.7; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed October 2024, reported by Jack Taylor.

Vulnerability Overview

The Ultimate Member – User Profile, Registration, Login, Member Directory, Content Restriction & Membership Plugin plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Cross-Site Request Forgery in all versions up to, and including, 2.8.6. This is due to missing or incorrect nonce validation on the admin_init or user_action_hook function. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to modify a users membership status 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, and no interaction from a victim user.

CWE-352: Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)

Reaching this weakness in Ultimate Member <= 2.8.6 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 Ultimate Member the fix is 2.8.7: builds <= 2.8.6 are affected, anything from 2.8.7 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 2.8.7, 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 2.8.7 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

Firewall
Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2024-8520 https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/7ffddc03-d4ae-460e-972a-98804d947d09 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2024-8520

Related records

Same weakness class

Other vulnerabilities in Ultimate Member – User Profile, Registration, Login, Member Directory, Content Restriction & Membership Plugin

CVSS Vector

5.3

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

Base

Attack VectorNetwork
Attack ComplexityLow
Privileges RequiredNone
User InteractionNone
ScopeUnchanged
ConfidentialityNone
IntegrityLow
AvailabilityNone

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