CVE-2014-9414

W3 Total Cache <= 0.9.4 - Cross-Site Request Forgery

2014-12-10 00:00

Strategic Overview

Status: Patched in 0.9.4.1
Affected Plugin: W3 Total Cache
Affected Version: <= 0.9.4
CVSS: 4.3Medium
Weakness type: CWE-352 · Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
CVE: CVE-2014-9414

At a glance

CVE-2014-9414 is a medium-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the W3 Total Cache WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 0.9.4. It carries a CVSS score of 4.3 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 0.9.4.1; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed December 2014, reported by Mazin Ahmed.

Vulnerability Overview

The W3 Total Cache plugin before 0.9.4.1 for WordPress does not properly handle empty nonces, which allows remote attackers to conduct cross-site request forgery (CSRF) attacks and hijack the authentication of administrators for requests that change the mobile site redirect URI via the mobile_groups[*][redirect] parameter and an empty _wpnonce parameter in the w3tc_mobile page to wp-admin/admin.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-352: Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)

Reaching this weakness in W3 Total Cache <= 0.9.4 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 W3 Total Cache the fix is 0.9.4.1: builds <= 0.9.4 are affected, anything from 0.9.4.1 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 0.9.4.1, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to W3 Total Cache: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: W3 Total Cache 0.9.4.1 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

Firewall
Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2014-9414 https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/a910fd44-4de1-41e8-8da2-d72a2f835797 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2014-9414

Related records

Same weakness class

8.8W3 Total Cache <= 0.9.4 CSRF leading to Stored Cross-Site Scripting

Other vulnerabilities in W3 Total Cache

CVSS Vector

4.3

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

Base

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

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