Benevolent <= 1.3.4 - Cross-Site Request Forgery to Notice Dismissal
Strategic Overview
- Status
- Patched in 1.3.5
- Affected Theme
- Benevolent
- Affected Version
<= 1.3.4- CVSS
- 4.3Medium
- Weakness type
- CWE-352 · Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
- CVE
CVE-2024-37450
At a glance
CVE-2024-37450 is a medium-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the Benevolent WordPress theme, affecting versions <= 1.3.4. 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 1.3.5; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed June 2024, reported by Dhabaleshwar Das.
Vulnerability Overview
The Benevolent theme for WordPress is vulnerable to Cross-Site Request Forgery in versions up to, and including, 1.3.4. This is due to missing or incorrect nonce validation on the benevolent_update_admin_notice() function. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to dismiss notices 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)
Benevolent <= 1.3.4 carries this weakness at benevolent_update_admin_notice(), and reaching it 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 Benevolent the fix is 1.3.5: builds <= 1.3.4 are affected, anything from 1.3.5 onward is not.
Remediation
Update to version 1.3.5, or a newer patched version
How does WordSec protect against this?
The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Benevolent: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Benevolent 1.3.5 closes this, and updating the theme is the step that ends it.
- Firewall
- Alerts
External References
Related records
Other vulnerabilities in Benevolent
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