CVE-2022-1916 in Active Products Tables for WooCommerce
Summary
by MITRE • 06/27/2022
The Active Products Tables for WooCommerce. Professional products tables for WooCommerce store WordPress plugin before 1.0.5 does not sanitise and escape a parameter before outputting it back in the response of an AJAX action (available to both unauthenticated and authenticated users), leading to a Reflected cross-Site Scripting
If you want to get best quality of vulnerability data, you may have to visit VulDB.
Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 07/15/2022
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2022-1916 affects the Active Products Tables for WooCommerce plugin, specifically versions prior to 1.0.5, within WordPress environments. This issue represents a classic reflected cross-site scripting vulnerability that can be exploited by attackers to inject malicious scripts into web pages viewed by users. The flaw exists in how the plugin handles user input through AJAX endpoints that are accessible to both authenticated and unauthenticated users, creating a significant security risk for WooCommerce stores that rely on this plugin for product table functionality.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability stems from inadequate input sanitization and output escaping within the plugin's AJAX handling mechanism. When the plugin processes requests through its AJAX actions, it fails to properly sanitize a parameter before incorporating it into the HTTP response. This parameter is then reflected back to the user's browser without appropriate HTML escaping or encoding, allowing attackers to inject malicious JavaScript code that executes in the context of the victim's browser session. The vulnerability specifically impacts the plugin's ability to handle user-supplied data through the AJAX interface, where the lack of proper validation and sanitization creates an attack surface that can be exploited by remote attackers.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple XSS exploitation, as it can enable attackers to perform a range of malicious activities including session hijacking, credential theft, and redirection to malicious websites. Since the affected AJAX endpoints are accessible to unauthenticated users, the attack surface is significantly expanded, allowing any visitor to the website to potentially exploit this vulnerability. The reflected nature of the XSS means that attackers need only to craft a malicious URL with the harmful payload and send it to victims, who will then execute the injected code when their browser processes the response. This vulnerability can compromise the integrity of the entire WooCommerce store by potentially allowing attackers to modify product displays, steal customer information, or manipulate the shopping experience.
Mitigation strategies for CVE-2022-1916 should prioritize immediate patching of the Active Products Tables for WooCommerce plugin to version 1.0.5 or later, which contains the necessary fixes for the sanitization and escaping issues. Organizations should also implement proper input validation at multiple layers of their application architecture, ensuring that all user-supplied parameters are properly sanitized before being processed or returned in HTTP responses. Network-level protections such as web application firewalls can provide additional defense-in-depth measures, though these should not be relied upon as the sole mitigation. The vulnerability aligns with CWE-79 which specifically addresses cross-site scripting flaws, and represents a typical example of techniques categorized under ATT&CK technique T1059.007 for command and scripting interpreter usage. Regular security audits and vulnerability assessments should be conducted to identify similar issues in other plugins and themes, as this vulnerability demonstrates the importance of proper input validation and output escaping in web applications.