CVE-2023-33923

Multiple Themes (Various Versions) - Cross-Site Request Forgery to Arbitrary Plugin Activation

2023-05-30 00:00

Strategic Overview

Status: Patched in 1.4.6
Affected Theme: Viral News
Affected Version: <= 1.4.5
CVSS: 4.3Medium
Weakness type: CWE-352 · Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
CVE: CVE-2023-33923

At a glance

CVE-2023-33923 is a medium-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the Viral News WordPress theme, affecting versions <= 1.4.5. 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 1.4.6; sites on affected versions should update now. Disclosed May 2023, reported by Dave Jong.

Vulnerability Overview

Several themes for WordPress are vulnerable to Cross-Site Request Forgery due to missing nonce validation on the activate_plugin() function called via an AJAX action in various versions of the themes. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to activate arbitrary plugins via a forged request, if they can trick an authenticated user 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)

Viral News <= 1.4.5 carries this weakness at activate_plugin(), 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 Viral News the fix is 1.4.6: builds <= 1.4.5 are affected, anything from 1.4.6 onward is not.

Remediation

Update to version 1.4.6, or a newer patched version

How does WordSec protect against this?

The attempt arrives as an ordinary request to Viral News: WordSec's web application firewall inspects request payloads before WordPress loads them. None of that substitutes for the fix: Viral News 1.4.6 closes this, and updating the theme is the step that ends it.

Firewall
Alerts

External References

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2023-33923 https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/vulnerabilities/id/d3543a39-ad88-40be-93b8-36ec638db4bd https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-33923

Related records

Other vulnerabilities in Viral News

4.3CVE-2023-33923: Multiple Themes Arbitrary Plugin ActivationCVE-2023-33923

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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