CVE-2024-51630 in Responsive Flickr Gallery Plugin
Summary
by MITRE • 11/09/2024
Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in Lars Schenk Responsive Flickr Gallery allows Stored XSS.This issue affects Responsive Flickr Gallery: from n/a through 1.3.1.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 02/28/2025
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2024-51630 represents a critical security flaw in the Lars Schenk Responsive Flickr Gallery plugin for WordPress systems. This issue manifests as a cross-site request forgery vulnerability that enables attackers to execute stored cross-site scripting attacks against users of the affected plugin. The vulnerability exists within the plugin's handling of user input and request processing mechanisms, creating a dangerous pathway for malicious actors to compromise website security and user data integrity.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability stems from inadequate validation and sanitization of user-supplied data within the plugin's administrative interfaces and API endpoints. When users interact with the gallery plugin's management features, the system fails to properly verify the authenticity of requests originating from legitimate administrators. This CSRF weakness allows attackers to craft malicious requests that appear to come from authenticated users, thereby bypassing standard security controls. The stored XSS component emerges when malicious payloads are persisted in the plugin's database or configuration files, ensuring that subsequent user interactions trigger the execution of malicious scripts.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple data theft or service disruption, as it creates persistent security risks for WordPress installations utilizing the affected plugin. Attackers can leverage this flaw to inject malicious JavaScript code that executes in the context of authenticated users' browsers, potentially enabling full account compromise, session hijacking, or data exfiltration. The vulnerability affects all versions of the Responsive Flickr Gallery plugin from the initial release through version 1.3.1, indicating a long-standing security gap that has remained unaddressed. This widespread impact affects numerous WordPress websites that rely on the plugin for image gallery functionality, potentially exposing thousands of sites to coordinated attacks.
Organizations affected by this vulnerability should prioritize immediate remediation through plugin updates to the latest version that addresses the CSRF and XSS weaknesses. The mitigation strategy must include comprehensive security audits of the affected WordPress installations, implementation of additional security headers, and consideration of web application firewalls to detect and block malicious requests. Security teams should also conduct thorough penetration testing to identify any potential exploitation attempts and establish monitoring protocols for suspicious user activities. According to CWE standards, this vulnerability maps to CWE-352 for CSRF and CWE-79 for XSS, representing a compound security weakness that requires layered defensive approaches. The ATT&CK framework categorizes this as a privilege escalation and persistence technique, where attackers can establish footholds within target environments through the exploitation of web application vulnerabilities. Organizations should also consider implementing Content Security Policy headers and proper input validation mechanisms to prevent similar vulnerabilities from emerging in other components of their web applications, as this represents a systemic security gap that requires comprehensive security architecture review and improvement.