CVE-2023-41730 in SendPress Newsletters Plugin
Summary
by MITRE • 10/25/2023
Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in SendPress Newsletters plugin <= 1.22.3.31 versions.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 10/28/2023
The CVE-2023-41730 vulnerability represents a critical cross-site request forgery flaw discovered in the SendPress Newsletters WordPress plugin affecting versions up to and including 1.22.3.31. This vulnerability resides within the plugin's administrative interface and exploits the absence of proper anti-CSRF protection mechanisms in the affected codebase. The flaw allows authenticated attackers with contributor-level privileges or higher to execute unauthorized administrative actions on behalf of victims, making it particularly dangerous in environments where multiple users have varying permission levels. The vulnerability stems from the plugin's failure to implement proper request validation techniques such as anti-CSRF tokens or origin checking mechanisms.
The technical implementation of this CSRF vulnerability manifests through the plugin's administrative endpoints that process newsletter-related configurations without sufficient validation of the request source or authenticity. Attackers can craft malicious requests that appear to originate from legitimate administrative sessions, exploiting the trust relationship between the web application and the authenticated user. The vulnerability specifically affects the plugin's handling of administrative actions such as sending newsletters, modifying subscription lists, or changing plugin settings. This flaw violates fundamental web application security principles and aligns with CWE-352, which defines cross-site request forgery as a weakness where the application fails to validate that requests originate from the intended user.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple unauthorized actions, as it can lead to significant data compromise and system manipulation within WordPress installations using the affected plugin. An attacker with contributor privileges can potentially send spam newsletters to all subscribers, modify critical plugin configurations, or even gain elevated privileges through chained attacks. The vulnerability's exploitation requires minimal technical skill and can be automated, making it particularly dangerous in multi-user environments where administrators may not be vigilant about monitoring all user activities. This flaw directly impacts the principle of least privilege and can result in complete compromise of newsletter functionality and associated subscriber data.
Organizations should immediately update to the patched version of the SendPress Newsletters plugin or implement temporary mitigations such as disabling the affected plugin functionality until updates are applied. The recommended approach includes implementing proper anti-CSRF token validation mechanisms, ensuring all administrative endpoints require proper authentication verification, and monitoring for suspicious administrative activities. Security teams should also consider implementing web application firewalls that can detect and block suspicious request patterns, particularly those targeting known vulnerable endpoints. This vulnerability demonstrates the importance of maintaining up-to-date security practices and the necessity of implementing robust input validation and request origin verification as outlined in the OWASP Top Ten and MITRE ATT&CK framework's web application security categories.