CVE-2016-1000146 in pondol-formmail Plugin
Summary
by MITRE
Reflected XSS in wordpress plugin pondol-formmail v1.1
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 07/24/2019
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2016-1000146 represents a reflected cross-site scripting flaw discovered in the pondol-formmail WordPress plugin version 1.1. This security weakness resides within the plugin's handling of user input parameters, specifically affecting how the application processes and displays data received from HTTP requests. The reflected XSS vulnerability occurs when the plugin fails to properly sanitize or encode user-supplied data before incorporating it into the HTTP response sent back to the victim's browser. This type of vulnerability allows attackers to inject malicious scripts that execute in the context of the victim's browser session, potentially compromising user security and data integrity.
The technical exploitation of this vulnerability involves crafting malicious HTTP requests that contain crafted script payloads within the plugin's input parameters. When a victim clicks on a malicious link or visits a compromised webpage that triggers the vulnerable plugin functionality, the malicious script code becomes reflected back to the user's browser and executed in their context. This behavior stems from the plugin's inadequate input validation and output encoding mechanisms, which fail to properly neutralize potentially dangerous characters and script constructs that could be interpreted as executable code by web browsers. The vulnerability directly maps to CWE-79 which defines the weakness of cross-site scripting where untrusted data is incorporated into web pages without proper validation or encoding.
The operational impact of this reflected XSS vulnerability extends beyond simple script execution, as it can enable attackers to perform various malicious activities including session hijacking, credential theft, data exfiltration, and redirection to malicious websites. An attacker could craft payloads that steal authentication cookies, capture sensitive form data submitted through the vulnerable plugin, or even modify the content of the affected web pages to deceive users. The vulnerability is particularly concerning in WordPress environments where administrators may have elevated privileges, as successful exploitation could potentially lead to complete compromise of the affected website. This type of attack aligns with ATT&CK technique T1566 which describes social engineering tactics involving the delivery of malicious content through web-based attacks.
Mitigation strategies for this vulnerability require immediate patching of the affected pondol-formmail plugin to version 1.2 or later, which contains the necessary security fixes. System administrators should also implement input validation measures at the web application firewall level and ensure proper output encoding of all user-supplied data. Additionally, regular security audits of installed WordPress plugins should be conducted to identify and remediate similar vulnerabilities. The implementation of Content Security Policy headers can provide additional defense-in-depth measures to prevent execution of unauthorized scripts, while monitoring logs for suspicious request patterns can help detect potential exploitation attempts. Organizations should also consider implementing web application security monitoring solutions that can detect and alert on XSS attack patterns in real-time.