CVE-2021-25042

WP Visitor Statistics (Real Time Traffic) <= 5.4 - Missing Authorization to Stored Cross-Site Scripting

2022-01-31 00:00
Krzysztof Zając

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 5.5
Affected Plugin
WP Visitor Statistics (Real Time Traffic)
Affected Version
<= 5.4
CVSS
5.4Medium
Weakness type
CWE-862 · Missing Authorization
CVE
CVE-2021-25042
View all WP Visitor Statistics (Real Time Traffic) vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2021-25042 is a medium-severity Missing Authorization vulnerability in the WP Visitor Statistics (Real Time Traffic) WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 5.4. It carries a CVSS score of 5.4 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). The root cause is a missing authorization check on a reachable function. The issue is fixed in version 5.5; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed January 2022, reported by Krzysztof Zając.

Vulnerability Overview

The WP Visitor Statistics (Real Time Traffic) WordPress plugin before 5.5 does not have authorisation and CSRF checks in the updateIpAddress AJAX action, allowing any authenticated user to call it, or make a logged in user do it via a CSRF attack and add an arbitrary IP address to exclude. Furthermore, due to the lack of validation, sanitisation and escaping, users could set a malicious value and perform Cross-Site Scripting attacks against logged in admin

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-862: Missing Authorization

Reaching this weakness in WP Visitor Statistics (Real Time Traffic) <= 5.4 takes a caller who can reach the endpoint. A missing authorization check means a function is reachable by anyone who can reach the endpoint, because the code never asks whether the caller is allowed to perform the action.

Any user who can reach the endpoint gets to run an action reserved for higher-privileged roles, from reading protected data to changing settings or content. For WP Visitor Statistics (Real Time Traffic) the fix is 5.5: builds <= 5.4 are affected, anything from 5.5 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 5.5, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

Because it turns on account access, WordSec's login security is the relevant layer: role-based two-factor, captcha and brute-force limits raise the cost of getting the account this needs. None of that substitutes for the fix: WP Visitor Statistics (Real Time Traffic) 5.5 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Login Security
  • Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2021-25042https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/693fbac2-46b8-4771-99b5-6cd97096286ehttps://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2021-25042

Related records

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