CVE-2015-2293

Yoast SEO <= 1.7.3.3 - Cross-Site Request Forgery

2015-03-10 00:00

Strategic Overview

Status: Patched in 1.5.7
Affected Plugin: Yoast SEO – Advanced SEO with real-time guidance and built-in AI
Affected Version: 1.5.6 – 1.7.3.3 · 3 branches
CVSS: 7.5High
Weakness type: CWE-352 · Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
CVE: CVE-2015-2293

View all Yoast SEO – Advanced SEO with real-time guidance and built-in AI vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2015-2293 is a high-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the Yoast SEO WordPress plugin, affecting versions 1.5.6 – 1.7.3.3 · 3 branches. It carries a CVSS score of 7.5 (reachable over the network; high confidentiality, integrity, availability impact). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 1.5.7; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed March 2015, reported by Ryan Dewhurst.

Vulnerability Overview

Multiple cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerabilities in admin/class-bulk-editor-list-table.php in the WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin before 1.5.7, 1.6.x before 1.6.4, and 1.7.x before 1.7.4 for WordPress allow remote attackers to hijack the authentication of certain users for requests that conduct SQL injection attacks via the (1) order_by or (2) order parameter in the wpseo_bulk-editor page.

Technical Analysis

The vector marks this flaw as remotely reachable over the network, 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 Yoast SEO 1.5.6 – 1.7.3.3 · 3 branches 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 Yoast SEO the fix is 1.5.7: builds 1.5.6 – 1.7.3.3 · 3 branches are affected, anything from 1.5.7 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to one of the following versions, or a newer patched version: 1.5.7, 1.6.4, 1.7.4

How does WordSec protect against this?

The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Yoast SEO: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Yoast SEO 1.5.7 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

Firewall
Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2015-2293 https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/dc7d0124-9ddd-4f88-bffd-e09e10137a3d https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2015-2293

Related records

Other vulnerabilities in Yoast SEO – Advanced SEO with real-time guidance and built-in AI

CVSS Vector

7.5

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

Base

Attack VectorNetwork
Attack ComplexityHigh
Privileges RequiredNone
User InteractionRequired
ScopeUnchanged
ConfidentialityHigh
IntegrityHigh
AvailabilityHigh

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