WP Spell Check <= 9.12 - Cross-Site Request Forgery
Strategic Overview
- Status
- Patched in 9.13
- Affected Plugin
- WP Spell Check
- Affected Version
<= 9.12- CVSS
- 5.4Medium
- Weakness type
- CWE-352 · Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
- CVE
CVE pending
At a glance
This record tracks a medium-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the WP Spell Check WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 9.12. It carries a CVSS score of 5.4 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 9.13; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed December 2022, reported by WPScanTeam.
Vulnerability Overview
The WP Spell Check plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Cross-Site Request Forgery in versions up to, and including, 9.12. This is due to missing nonce validation. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to delete ignored words 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 WP Spell Check <= 9.12 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 Spell Check the fix is 9.13: builds <= 9.12 are affected, anything from 9.13 onward is not.
Remediation
Update to version 9.13, or a newer patched version
How does WordSec protect against this?
The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to WP Spell Check: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: WP Spell Check 9.13 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.
- Firewall
- Alerts
External References
Related records
Same weakness class
Other vulnerabilities in WP Spell Check
Vulnerability data © Defiant, Inc., provided under the Wordfence Intelligence T&C