Special Text Boxes <= 5.9.109 - Authenticated (Admin+) Stored Cross-Site Scripting
Strategic Overview
- Status
- Patched in 5.9.110
- Affected Plugin
- Special Text Boxes
- Affected Version
<= 5.9.109- CVSS
- 5.5Medium
- Weakness type
- CWE-79 · Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
- CVE
CVE-2021-24485
At a glance
CVE-2021-24485 is a medium-severity Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in the Special Text Boxes WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 5.9.109. It carries a CVSS score of 5.5 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires an authenticated account at Admin level or above. The issue is fixed in version 5.9.110; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed September 2021, reported by Akash Rajendra Patil.
Vulnerability Overview
The Special Text Boxes WordPress plugin through 5.9.109 does not sanitise or escape some of its settings, 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 Special Text Boxes <= 5.9.109 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 Special Text Boxes the fix is 5.9.110: builds <= 5.9.109 are affected, anything from 5.9.110 onward is not.
Remediation
Update to version 5.9.110, 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: Special Text Boxes 5.9.110 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.
- Firewall
- Alerts
External References
Related records
Same weakness class
Other vulnerabilities in Special Text Boxes
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