CVE-2017-18521 in democracy-poll Plugin
Summary
by MITRE
The democracy-poll plugin before 5.4 for WordPress has CSRF via wp-admin/options-general.php?page=democracy-poll&subpage=l10n.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 11/28/2023
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2017-18521 affects the democracy-poll plugin for WordPress, specifically versions prior to 5.4, and represents a cross-site request forgery flaw that undermines the integrity of administrative operations within the WordPress ecosystem. This vulnerability exists within the plugin's handling of administrative requests through the wp-admin/options-general.php endpoint, where the plugin's localization subpage functionality fails to implement proper anti-CSRF protection mechanisms. The issue manifests when authenticated administrators access the plugin's configuration interface to manage localization settings, creating a potential attack vector that could be exploited by malicious actors to perform unauthorized administrative actions without proper authentication.
The technical nature of this vulnerability stems from the absence of anti-CSRF tokens or similar validation mechanisms within the plugin's administrative interface. When a privileged user navigates to the democracy-poll plugin's localization settings page, the application does not validate the authenticity of requests originating from the legitimate user interface. This design flaw allows attackers to craft malicious requests that, when executed by an authenticated administrator, would be processed as legitimate administrative actions. The vulnerability specifically targets the wp-admin/options-general.php page with the democracy-poll plugin parameters, making it a targeted attack surface that requires no special privileges beyond those of a regular administrator account. The flaw aligns with CWE-352, which defines cross-site request forgery as a security weakness that allows an attacker to perform actions on behalf of a user without their knowledge or consent.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple data manipulation to potentially enable complete compromise of WordPress administrative functionality. An attacker who successfully exploits this CSRF vulnerability could modify plugin settings, alter localization configurations, or potentially gain unauthorized access to other administrative features within the plugin's scope. The consequences could include data corruption, unauthorized changes to user-facing content, or the potential for privilege escalation within the WordPress environment. This vulnerability particularly affects WordPress installations that rely on the democracy-poll plugin for polling functionality, where the administrative interface could be leveraged to alter poll configurations or manipulate user data. The attack vector is particularly concerning because it requires minimal user interaction beyond visiting a malicious page, making it susceptible to various social engineering techniques that could trick administrators into executing malicious requests.
Organizations and WordPress administrators should immediately implement mitigations to address this vulnerability by upgrading to democracy-poll plugin version 5.4 or later, which contains the necessary anti-CSRF protections. The upgrade process should be carefully planned to ensure compatibility with existing installations and configurations. Additionally, administrators should review their WordPress plugin ecosystem for similar vulnerabilities and consider implementing additional security measures such as web application firewalls, request validation, and monitoring for unauthorized administrative actions. The vulnerability demonstrates the critical importance of proper input validation and authentication mechanisms within WordPress plugins, as highlighted by ATT&CK technique T1078 which covers valid accounts and T1548 which addresses privilege escalation. Regular security audits of WordPress installations, including comprehensive plugin and theme reviews, should be conducted to identify and remediate similar vulnerabilities across the entire attack surface.