Strategic Overview
- Status
- Patched in 1.09
- Affected Plugin
- underConstruction
- Affected Version
< 1.09- CVSS
- 8.8High
- Weakness type
- CWE-352 · Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
- CVE
CVE-2013-2699
At a glance
CVE-2013-2699 is a high-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the underConstruction WordPress plugin, affecting versions < 1.09. It carries a CVSS score of 8.8 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity; high confidentiality, integrity, availability impact). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 1.09; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed August 2014.
Vulnerability Overview
Cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the underConstruction plugin before 1.09 for WordPress allows remote attackers to hijack the authentication of administrators for requests that deactivate a plugin via unspecified vectors.
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. A successful exploit has high impact on confidentiality, integrity, availability — full site compromise territory.
CWE-352: Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
Reaching this weakness in underConstruction < 1.09 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 underConstruction the fix is 1.09: builds < 1.09 are affected, anything from 1.09 onward is not.
Remediation
Update to version 1.09, or a newer patched version
How does WordSec protect against this?
The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to underConstruction: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: underConstruction 1.09 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.
- Firewall
- Alerts
External References
Related records
Same weakness class
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