CVE-2022-0211

Shield Security <= 13.0.5 - Admin+ Stored Cross-Site Scripting

2022-01-19 00:00
R3N0

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 13.0.6
Affected Plugin
Shield Security – Smart Bot Blocking, Brute-Force Login Protection & File Scanning
Affected Version
<= 13.0.5
CVSS
5.5Medium
Weakness type
CWE-79 · Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
CVE
CVE-2022-0211
View all Shield Security – Smart Bot Blocking, Brute-Force Login Protection & File Scanning vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2022-0211 is a medium-severity Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in the Shield Security WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 13.0.5. It carries a CVSS score of 5.5 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). The issue is fixed in version 13.0.6; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed January 2022, reported by R3N0.

Vulnerability Overview

The Shield Security WordPress plugin before 13.0.6 does not sanitise and escape admin notes, which could allow high privilege users to perform Cross-Site Scripting attacks even when the unfiltered_html is disallowed.

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 interaction from a victim user.

CWE-79: Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')

Reaching this weakness in Shield Security <= 13.0.5 takes a caller who can reach the endpoint. 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 Shield Security the fix is 13.0.6: builds <= 13.0.5 are affected, anything from 13.0.6 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 13.0.6, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Shield Security: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Shield Security 13.0.6 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Firewall
  • Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2022-0211https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/287c6cdc-f534-4b87-8a97-ee1e3666cd25https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-0211

Related records

Vulnerability data © Defiant, Inc., provided under the Wordfence Intelligence T&C