Strategic Overview
- Status
- Patched in 4.9.24
- Affected Plugin
- UserPro - Community and User Profile WordPress Plugin
- Affected Version
<= 4.9.23- CVSS
- 6.1Medium
- Weakness type
- CWE-79 · Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
- CVE
CVE-2018-16285
At a glance
CVE-2018-16285 is a medium-severity Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in the UserPro - Community and User Profile WordPress Plugin WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 4.9.23. It carries a CVSS score of 6.1 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 4.9.24; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed August 2018.
Vulnerability Overview
The UserPro plugin through 4.9.23 for WordPress allows XSS via the shortcode parameter in a userpro_shortcode_template action to wp-admin/admin-ajax.php.
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 UserPro - Community and User Profile WordPress Plugin <= 4.9.23 takes no account at all. 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 UserPro - Community and User Profile WordPress Plugin the fix is 4.9.24: builds <= 4.9.23 are affected, anything from 4.9.24 onward is not.
Remediation
Update to version 4.9.24, or a newer patched version
How does WordSec protect against this?
Requests carrying this pattern arrive without a session, so nothing upstream of the firewall gets a chance to reject them: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: UserPro - Community and User Profile WordPress Plugin 4.9.24 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.
- Firewall
- Login Security
- Alerts
External References
Related records
Same weakness class
Other vulnerabilities in UserPro - Community and User Profile WordPress Plugin
- 10.0UserPro <= 4.9.20 Privilege Escalation
- 9.8CVE-2024-56214: Userpro <= 5.1.9 Local File Inclusion
CVE-2024-56214 - 9.8CVE-2024-35700: UserPro Account Takeover to Privilege Escalation
CVE-2024-35700 - 9.8CVE-2023-2437: UserPro <= 5.1.1 Authentication Bypass to Administrator
CVE-2023-2437 - 9.8CVE-2023-2449: UserPro <= 5.1.1 Insecure Password Reset Mechanism
CVE-2023-2449 - 9.8UserPro <= 4.9.27 Privilege Escalation
- 9.8CVE-2017-16562: UserPro <= 4.9.17 Authentication Bypass
CVE-2017-16562 - 8.8CVE-2023-2440: UserPro <= 5.1.1 CSRF to Privilege Escalation
CVE-2023-2440
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