CVE-2024-51684

W3P SEO <= 1.8.5 - Cross-Site Request Forgery to Stored Cross-Site Scripting

2024-11-01 00:00

Strategic Overview

Status: Patched in 1.8.6
Affected Plugin: W3P SEO
Affected Version: <= 1.8.5
CVSS: 6.1Medium
Weakness type: CWE-352 · Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
CVE: CVE-2024-51684

At a glance

CVE-2024-51684 is a medium-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the W3P SEO WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 1.8.5. 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 1.8.6; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed November 2024, reported by SOPROBRO.

Vulnerability Overview

The W3P SEO plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Cross-Site Request Forgery in all versions up to, and including, 1.8.5. This is due to missing or incorrect nonce validation on a function. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to update settings and inject malicious web scripts via a forged request granted they can trick a site administrator into performing an action such as clicking on a link.

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 W3P SEO <= 1.8.5 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 W3P SEO the fix is 1.8.6: builds <= 1.8.5 are affected, anything from 1.8.6 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 1.8.6, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to W3P SEO: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: W3P SEO 1.8.6 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

Firewall
Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2024-51684 https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/35f49283-00e5-450e-a908-261b0357b36b https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2024-51684

CVSS Vector

6.1

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

Base

Attack VectorNetwork
Attack ComplexityLow
Privileges RequiredNone
User InteractionRequired
ScopeChanged
ConfidentialityLow
IntegrityLow
AvailabilityNone

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