WP BrowserUpdate <= 4.5 - Authenticated (Admin+) Stored Cross-Site Scripting
Strategic Overview
- Status
- Patched in 4.6
- Affected Plugin
- WP BrowserUpdate
- Affected Version
<= 4.5- CVSS
- 4.8Medium
- Weakness type
- CWE-79 · Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
- CVE
CVE-2023-28690
At a glance
CVE-2023-28690 is a medium-severity Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in the WP BrowserUpdate WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 4.5. It carries a CVSS score of 4.8 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires an authenticated account at Admin level or above. The issue is fixed in version 4.6; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed April 2023, reported by qilin_99.
Vulnerability Overview
The WP BrowserUpdate plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Stored Cross-Site Scripting via the multiple parameters in versions up to, and including, 4.5 due to insufficient input sanitization and output escaping. Combined with a Cross-Site Request Forgery vulnerability in versions <= 4.4.1, this makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to inject arbitrary web scripts in pages that will execute if they can successfully trick a user into performing an action such as clicking on a link. In version 4.5, this issue is only exploited by authenticated administrative users.
Technical Analysis
The vector marks this flaw as remotely reachable over the network, with low attack complexity — no special timing or configuration is needed.
CWE-79: Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
Reaching this weakness in WP BrowserUpdate <= 4.5 takes an account at Admin level or above. 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 WP BrowserUpdate the fix is 4.6: builds <= 4.5 are affected, anything from 4.6 onward is not.
Remediation
Update to version 4.6, or a newer patched version
How does WordSec protect against this?
An attacker needs Admin access first, so the firewall sees the attempt as traffic from a logged-in account: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: WP BrowserUpdate 4.6 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.
- Firewall
- Alerts
External References
Related records
Other vulnerabilities in WP BrowserUpdate
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