CVE-2021-24806

Comments - wpDiscuz <= 7.3.3 - Arbitrary Comment Addition/Edition/Deletion by Cross-Site Request Forgery

2021-10-11 00:00

Strategic Overview

Status: Patched in 7.3.4
Affected Plugin: Comments – wpDiscuz
Affected Version: < 7.3.4
CVSS: 4.3Medium
Weakness type: CWE-352 · Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
CVE: CVE-2021-24806

View all Comments – wpDiscuz vulnerabilities

At a glance

CVE-2021-24806 is a medium-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the Comments WordPress plugin, affecting versions < 7.3.4. It carries a CVSS score of 4.3 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 7.3.4; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed October 2021, reported by Brandon James Roldan (tomorrowisnew).

Vulnerability Overview

The wpDiscuz WordPress plugin before 7.3.4 does check for CSRF when adding, editing and deleting comments, which could allow attacker to make logged in users such as admin edit and delete arbitrary comment, or the user who made the comment to edit it via a CSRF attack. Attackers could also make logged in users post arbitrary comment.

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 Comments < 7.3.4 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 Comments the fix is 7.3.4: builds < 7.3.4 are affected, anything from 7.3.4 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 7.3.4, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Comments: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Comments 7.3.4 closes this, and updating the plugin is the step that ends it.

Firewall
Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2021-24806 https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/e641453c-8fa0-4b44-b912-b797aeae1795 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2021-24806

Related records

Same weakness class

4.3CVE-2023-47775: wpDiscuz <= 7.6.11 Cross-Site Request ForgeryCVE-2023-47775

Other vulnerabilities in Comments – wpDiscuz

CVSS Vector

4.3

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N

Base

Attack VectorNetwork
Attack ComplexityLow
Privileges RequiredNone
User InteractionRequired
ScopeUnchanged
ConfidentialityNone
IntegrityLow
AvailabilityNone

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