Strategic Overview
- Status
- Patched in 3.0.5
- Affected Plugin
- WP Better Permalinks
- Affected Version
< 3.0.5- CVSS
- 8.8High
- Weakness type
- CWE-352 · Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
- CVE
CVE-2019-15835
At a glance
CVE-2019-15835 is a high-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the WP Better Permalinks WordPress plugin, affecting versions < 3.0.5. 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 3.0.5; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed June 2019.
Vulnerability Overview
The wp-better-permalinks plugin before 3.0.5 for WordPress has CSRF.
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 WP Better Permalinks < 3.0.5 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 WP Better Permalinks the fix is 3.0.5: builds < 3.0.5 are affected, anything from 3.0.5 onward is not.
Remediation
Update to version 3.0.5, or a newer patched version
How does WordSec protect against this?
The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to WP Better Permalinks: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: WP Better Permalinks 3.0.5 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.
- Firewall
- Alerts
External References
Vulnerability data © Defiant, Inc., provided under the Wordfence Intelligence T&C