CVE-2014-4561

Local Weather <= 1.0 - Reflected Cross-Site Scripting

2014-05-25 00:00

Strategic Overview

Status: Unpatched
Affected Plugin: Local Weather
Affected Version: <= 1.0
CVSS: 6.1Medium
Weakness type: CWE-79 · Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
CVE: CVE-2014-4561

At a glance

CVE-2014-4561 is a medium-severity Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in the Local Weather WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 1.0. It carries a CVSS score of 6.1 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires no authentication. No fixed release has been reported yet; treat installations running this software as exposed. Disclosed May 2014, reported by Prajal Kulkarni.

Vulnerability Overview

The ultimate-weather plugin 1.0 for WordPress has XSS via the url parameter.

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 Local Weather <= 1.0 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. No fixed build of this plugin is recorded for Local Weather yet, so installs running <= 1.0 stay exposed until the vendor ships one.

Remediation

No known patch available. Please review the vulnerability's details in depth and employ mitigations based on your organization's risk tolerance. It may be best to uninstall the affected software and find a replacement.

How does WordSec protect against this?

The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Local Weather: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. No patched version is recorded yet, which is the case where a filtering layer matters most, because there is nothing to update to.

Firewall
Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2014-4561 https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/2da9c3d0-7efb-4c34-bf31-2f17a52c21f9 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2014-4561

CVSS Vector

6.1

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

Base

Attack VectorNetwork
Attack ComplexityLow
Privileges RequiredNone
User InteractionRequired
ScopeChanged
ConfidentialityLow
IntegrityLow
AvailabilityNone

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