CVE-2024-27197 in Bee BeePress Plugin
Summary
by MITRE • 03/16/2024
Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in Bee BeePress allows Stored XSS.This issue affects BeePress: from n/a through 6.9.8.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 03/16/2024
The CVE-2024-27197 vulnerability represents a critical security flaw in Bee BeePress that demonstrates the dangerous intersection of cross-site request forgery and stored cross-site scripting attacks. This vulnerability exists within the BeePress content management system and affects versions ranging from the initial release through 6.9.8, creating a significant risk for organizations relying on this platform for their web applications. The flaw stems from inadequate validation and sanitization of user input within the application's request processing mechanisms, specifically in how the system handles user-generated content that gets stored and subsequently rendered without proper security measures.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability allows an attacker to craft malicious requests that, when executed by a victim's browser, can result in persistent XSS payloads being stored within the application's database. This occurs because the BeePress application fails to implement proper CSRF tokens or validation mechanisms when processing requests that modify stored content. The vulnerability manifests when users submit content that gets stored in the system's database, and subsequent requests to retrieve this content do not properly sanitize or escape the stored data before rendering it in the browser context. This creates a persistent security risk where malicious scripts can execute in the context of authenticated users, potentially leading to complete account compromise.
From an operational impact perspective, this vulnerability presents a severe threat to user security and application integrity. Attackers can exploit this flaw to steal session cookies, perform unauthorized actions on behalf of users, and potentially escalate privileges within the application. The stored nature of the XSS payload means that once injected, the malicious code will persist and execute every time the affected content is rendered, making it particularly dangerous for web applications that store user-generated content. The vulnerability aligns with CWE-352, which specifically addresses cross-site request forgery issues, and also relates to CWE-79, covering cross-site scripting vulnerabilities, creating a multi-layered attack vector that amplifies the overall security risk.
Organizations utilizing BeePress versions 6.9.8 or earlier must implement immediate mitigations to address this vulnerability. The primary defense involves implementing robust CSRF protection mechanisms including the generation and validation of unique tokens for each user session, ensuring that all state-changing operations require proper authentication verification. Additionally, comprehensive input sanitization and output encoding should be implemented to prevent malicious content from being stored and subsequently executed. The implementation of Content Security Policy headers can provide additional protection against XSS execution, while regular security audits and penetration testing should be conducted to identify similar vulnerabilities in the application's codebase. This vulnerability also maps to several ATT&CK techniques including T1566 for initial access through web application attacks and T1059 for command and scripting interpreter usage, highlighting the need for comprehensive security monitoring and incident response capabilities.