CVE-2024-11765 in Portfolio Plugin
Summary
by MITRE • 12/12/2024
The WordPress Portfolio Plugin – A Plugin for Making Filterable Portfolio Grid, Portfolio Slider and more plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Stored Cross-Site Scripting via the plugin's 'gs_portfolio' shortcode in all versions up to, and including, 1.6.3 due to insufficient input sanitization and output escaping on user supplied attributes. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with contributor-level access and above, to inject arbitrary web scripts in pages that will execute whenever a user accesses an injected page.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 02/18/2025
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2024-11765 affects the WordPress Portfolio Plugin, a widely used tool for creating filterable portfolio grids and sliders within WordPress environments. This plugin serves as a content management solution for displaying portfolios, making it a common target for attackers seeking to exploit weaknesses in WordPress ecosystems. The vulnerability resides specifically within the plugin's 'gs_portfolio' shortcode implementation, which processes user-supplied attributes to generate dynamic portfolio displays. The affected versions range from the initial release through version 1.6.3, indicating a prolonged window of exposure for potentially thousands of WordPress installations worldwide.
The technical flaw stems from inadequate input sanitization and output escaping mechanisms within the plugin's shortcode processing logic. When users with contributor-level access or higher submit portfolio-related content through the WordPress admin interface, the plugin fails to properly validate or sanitize the attributes passed to the 'gs_portfolio' shortcode. This insufficient sanitization creates a persistent cross-site scripting vulnerability where malicious scripts can be stored within the plugin's data structures. The vulnerability operates as a stored XSS because the malicious payloads are saved to the database and executed whenever any user accesses pages containing the compromised shortcode, regardless of whether the user has administrative privileges or not.
The operational impact of this vulnerability is significant for WordPress sites utilizing the affected plugin, as it provides authenticated attackers with a vector for executing arbitrary web scripts on victim browsers. Contributors and above possess sufficient privileges to modify content, making this attack particularly dangerous in environments where multiple users have elevated access levels. The stored nature of the vulnerability means that once a malicious payload is injected, it will persistently execute across all affected pages without requiring additional user interaction. This creates a persistent threat that can be used for session hijacking, credential theft, or redirection to malicious sites, potentially compromising entire WordPress installations and the broader web applications they support.
Organizations should immediately update to the latest version of the WordPress Portfolio Plugin to remediate this vulnerability, as no patches were available for versions prior to the fix. The vulnerability aligns with CWE-79, which specifically addresses cross-site scripting flaws in web applications, and represents a clear violation of secure coding practices that should be enforced through input validation and output escaping mechanisms. From an ATT&CK framework perspective, this vulnerability maps to T1566.001, representing the exploitation of vulnerabilities in web applications, and T1548.001, potentially enabling privilege escalation through the execution of malicious scripts. System administrators should implement immediate monitoring for any suspicious shortcode modifications and consider temporary disabling of the plugin until updates are confirmed to be properly applied across all affected installations.