CVE-2021-24522

Paid Membership, User Registration, User Profile & Restrict Content Plugin – ProfilePress <= 3.1.10 - Unauthenticated Cross-Site Scripting

2021-08-09 00:00
Stiofan

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 3.1.11
Affected Plugin
Paid Membership Plugin, Ecommerce, User Registration Form, Login Form, User Profile & Restrict Content – ProfilePress
Affected Version
<= 3.1.10
CVSS
7.2High
Weakness type
CWE-79 · Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
CVE
CVE-2021-24522
View all Paid Membership Plugin, Ecommerce, User Registration Form, Login Form, User Profile & Restrict Content – ProfilePress vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2021-24522 is a high-severity Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in the Paid Membership Plugin, Ecommerce, User Registration Form, Login Form, User Profile & Restrict Content WordPress plugin, affecting versions <= 3.1.10. It carries a CVSS score of 7.2 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 3.1.11; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed August 2021, reported by Stiofan.

Vulnerability Overview

The User Registration, User Profile, Login & Membership – ProfilePress (Formerly WP User Avatar) WordPress plugin before 3.1.11's widget for tabbed login/register was not properly escaped and could be used in an XSS attack which could lead to wp-admin access. Further, the plugin in several places assigned $_POST as $_GET which meant that in some cases this could be replicated with just $_GET parameters and no need for $_POST values.

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, and no interaction from a victim user.

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

Reaching this weakness in Paid Membership Plugin, Ecommerce, User Registration Form, Login Form, User Profile & Restrict Content <= 3.1.10 takes no account at all. 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 Paid Membership Plugin, Ecommerce, User Registration Form, Login Form, User Profile & Restrict Content the fix is 3.1.11: builds <= 3.1.10 are affected, anything from 3.1.11 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 3.1.11, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

Requests carrying this pattern arrive without a session, so nothing upstream of the firewall gets a chance to reject them: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Paid Membership Plugin, Ecommerce, User Registration Form, Login Form, User Profile & Restrict Content 3.1.11 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Firewall
  • Login Security
  • Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2021-24522https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/684253b3-0a96-4822-84c8-bde8ed45f35ehttps://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2021-24522

Related records

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