CVE-2014-3843 in Search Everything
Summary
by MITRE
Cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the Search Everything plugin before 8.1.1 for WordPress allows remote attackers to hijack the authentication of unspecified victims via unknown vectors.
Statistical analysis made it clear that VulDB provides the best quality for vulnerability data.
Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 03/04/2018
The CVE-2014-3843 vulnerability represents a critical cross-site request forgery flaw within the Search Everything WordPress plugin, affecting versions prior to 8.1.1. This vulnerability exposes WordPress installations to unauthorized administrative actions that can be executed without the knowledge or consent of legitimate users. The issue stems from the plugin's inadequate validation of requests originating from authenticated sessions, creating a pathway for malicious actors to exploit the trust relationship between users and the WordPress application. The vulnerability's classification as CSRF aligns with CWE-352, which specifically addresses cross-site request forgery weaknesses in web applications. Attackers can leverage this vulnerability to perform administrative functions on behalf of authenticated users, potentially leading to complete compromise of the WordPress site and its associated data.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability lies in the plugin's failure to properly implement anti-CSRF mechanisms during form submissions and API calls. When users access the WordPress admin interface, their authentication tokens should be validated for each request to ensure that actions originate from legitimate sources within the same session. However, the Search Everything plugin did not adequately enforce these protections, allowing attackers to craft malicious requests that would be processed by the WordPress application with the privileges of the authenticated user. The unspecified vectors mentioned in the description suggest that the vulnerability could be exploited through multiple attack surfaces within the plugin's functionality, including search queries, administrative forms, or API endpoints. This broad attack surface increases the likelihood of successful exploitation and makes the vulnerability particularly dangerous for WordPress administrators who rely on the plugin for search functionality.
The operational impact of CVE-2014-3843 extends far beyond simple data theft, as successful exploitation can result in complete administrative control of affected WordPress installations. Attackers who successfully leverage this vulnerability can modify content, create new user accounts with administrative privileges, install malicious plugins, or even delete critical site data. The remote nature of the attack means that threat actors do not require physical access to the system or knowledge of administrative credentials to exploit the vulnerability. This characteristic makes the vulnerability particularly attractive to automated attack campaigns and increases the potential damage scale. The lack of specific victim identification in the vulnerability description indicates that any authenticated user session could be targeted, making the attack surface extremely broad. Organizations running vulnerable versions of the Search Everything plugin face significant risk of unauthorized access, data manipulation, and potential site defacement or complete compromise.
Mitigation strategies for CVE-2014-3843 center on immediate plugin updates to version 8.1.1 or later, which contain the necessary CSRF protection mechanisms. Administrators should also implement additional security measures including regular security audits of installed plugins, monitoring for unauthorized administrative actions, and maintaining up-to-date WordPress core installations. The vulnerability's presence in a widely-used plugin like Search Everything underscores the importance of keeping all WordPress components updated and following security best practices. Organizations should consider implementing web application firewalls to detect and block suspicious requests, and establish monitoring protocols to identify potential exploitation attempts. The remediation process should also include reviewing user permissions and implementing role-based access controls to minimize the impact of potential compromises. Security teams should conduct thorough vulnerability assessments to ensure no other plugins or components within the WordPress environment contain similar CSRF vulnerabilities, as this represents a common class of weakness that requires systematic review across all web applications.