User Role by BestWebSoft <= 1.6.6 - Cross-Site Request Forgery to Privilege Escalation
Strategic Overview
- Status
- Patched in 1.6.7
- Affected Version
<= 1.6.6- CVSS
- 8.8High
- Weakness type
- CWE-352 · Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
- CVE
CVE-2023-0820
At a glance
CVE-2023-0820 is a high-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the User Role by BestWebSoft WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 1.6.6. 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 1.6.7; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed March 2023, reported by dc11.
Vulnerability Overview
The User Role by BestWebSoft plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Cross-Site Request Forgery in versions up to, and including, 1.6.6. This is due to missing nonce validation in the edit-role-page.php file. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to modify the capabilities of individual roles to elevate individual user privileges 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. 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 User Role by BestWebSoft <= 1.6.6 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 User Role by BestWebSoft the fix is 1.6.7: builds <= 1.6.6 are affected, anything from 1.6.7 onward is not.
Remediation
Update to version 1.6.7, or a newer patched version
How does WordSec protect against this?
The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to User Role by BestWebSoft: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: User Role by BestWebSoft 1.6.7 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.
- Firewall
- Alerts
External References
Related records
Other vulnerabilities in User Role by BestWebSoft – Add and Customize Roles and Capabilities in WordPress
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