JNews - WordPress Newspaper Magazine Blog AMP Theme < 8.0.6 - Reflected Cross-Site Scripting
Strategic Overview
- Status
- Patched in 8.0.6
- Affected Theme
- JNews - WordPress Newspaper Magazine Blog AMP Theme
- Affected Version
< 8.0.6- CVSS
- 6.1Medium
- Weakness type
- CWE-79 · Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
- CVE
CVE-2021-24342
At a glance
CVE-2021-24342 is a medium-severity Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability in the JNews - WordPress Newspaper Magazine Blog AMP Theme WordPress theme, affecting versions < 8.0.6. It carries a CVSS score of 6.1 (reachable over the network; low attack complexity). Exploitation requires no authentication. The issue is fixed in version 8.0.6; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed May 2021, reported by Truoc Phan.
Vulnerability Overview
The JNews WordPress theme before 8.0.6 did not sanitise the cat_id parameter in the POST request /?ajax-request=jnews (with action=jnews_build_mega_category_*), leading to a Reflected Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) issue.
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-79: Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
Reaching this weakness in JNews - WordPress Newspaper Magazine Blog AMP Theme < 8.0.6 takes a caller who can reach the endpoint. 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 JNews - WordPress Newspaper Magazine Blog AMP Theme the fix is 8.0.6: builds < 8.0.6 are affected, anything from 8.0.6 onward is not.
Remediation
Update to version 8.0.6, or a newer patched version
How does WordSec protect against this?
The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to JNews - WordPress Newspaper Magazine Blog AMP Theme: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: JNews - WordPress Newspaper Magazine Blog AMP Theme 8.0.6 closes this, and updating the theme is the step that ends it.
- Firewall
- Alerts
External References
Related records
Other vulnerabilities in JNews - WordPress Newspaper Magazine Blog AMP Theme
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