CVE-2022-4698

ProfilePress <= 4.5.0 - Authenticated (Administrator+) Stored Cross-Site Scripting via Form Settings

2022-12-23 00:00
Ivan Kuzymchak

Strategic Overview

Status
Patched in 4.5.1
Affected Plugin
Paid Membership Plugin, Ecommerce, User Registration Form, Login Form, User Profile & Restrict Content – ProfilePress
Affected Version
<= 4.5.0
CVSS
5.5Medium
Weakness type
CWE-79 · Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
CVE
CVE-2022-4698
View all Paid Membership Plugin, Ecommerce, User Registration Form, Login Form, User Profile & Restrict Content – ProfilePress vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2022-4698 is a medium-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 <= 4.5.0. It carries a CVSS score of 5.5 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires an authenticated account at Administrator level or above. The issue is fixed in version 4.5.1; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed December 2022, reported by Ivan Kuzymchak.

Vulnerability Overview

The ProfilePress plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Stored Cross-Site Scripting via several form fields in versions up to, and including, 4.5.0 due to insufficient input sanitization and output escaping. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with administrator-level permissions and above, to inject arbitrary web scripts in pages that will execute whenever a user accesses an injected page. This only affects multi-site installations and installations where unfiltered_html has been disabled.

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 Paid Membership Plugin, Ecommerce, User Registration Form, Login Form, User Profile & Restrict Content <= 4.5.0 takes an account at Administrator 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 Paid Membership Plugin, Ecommerce, User Registration Form, Login Form, User Profile & Restrict Content the fix is 4.5.1: builds <= 4.5.0 are affected, anything from 4.5.1 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 4.5.1, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

An attacker needs Administrator 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: Paid Membership Plugin, Ecommerce, User Registration Form, Login Form, User Profile & Restrict Content 4.5.1 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

  • Firewall
  • Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2022-4698https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/43c9dcec-f769-4c55-93d0-c2aa45a4fa16https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-4698

Related records

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