Vulnerabilities
Misconfiguration
Compliance
CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2012-1936

Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)

Published: May 03, 2012 | Modified: Apr 11, 2025
CVSS 3.x
N/A
Source:
NVD
CVSS 2.x
6.8 MEDIUM
AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu
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Additional information
NVDhttps://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2012-1936
CWEhttps://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/352.html

The wp_create_nonce function in wp-includes/pluggable.php in WordPress 3.3.1 and earlier associates a nonce with a user account instead of a user session, which might make it easier for remote attackers to conduct cross-site request forgery (CSRF) attacks on specific actions and objects by sniffing the network, as demonstrated by attacks against the wp-admin/admin-ajax.php and wp-admin/user-new.php scripts. NOTE: the vendor reportedly disputes the significance of this issue because wp_create_nonce operates as intended, even if it is arguably inconsistent with certain CSRF protection details advocated by external organizations

Weakness

The web application does not, or cannot, sufficiently verify whether a request was intentionally provided by the user who sent the request, which could have originated from an unauthorized actor.

Affected Software

NameVendorStart VersionEnd Version
WordpressWordpress*3.3.1 (including)
WordpressWordpress1.0 (including)1.0 (including)
WordpressWordpress1.0.1 (including)1.0.1 (including)
WordpressWordpress1.0.2 (including)1.0.2 (including)
WordpressWordpress1.1.1 (including)1.1.1 (including)
WordpressWordpress1.2 (including)1.2 (including)
WordpressWordpress1.2.1 (including)1.2.1 (including)
WordpressWordpress1.2.2 (including)1.2.2 (including)
WordpressWordpress1.2.3 (including)1.2.3 (including)
WordpressWordpress1.2.4 (including)1.2.4 (including)
WordpressWordpress1.2.5 (including)1.2.5 (including)
WordpressWordpress1.2.5-a (including)1.2.5-a (including)
WordpressWordpress1.3 (including)1.3 (including)
WordpressWordpress1.3.2 (including)1.3.2 (including)
WordpressWordpress1.3.3 (including)1.3.3 (including)
WordpressWordpress1.5 (including)1.5 (including)
WordpressWordpress1.5.1 (including)1.5.1 (including)
WordpressWordpress1.5.1.1 (including)1.5.1.1 (including)
WordpressWordpress1.5.1.2 (including)1.5.1.2 (including)
WordpressWordpress1.5.1.3 (including)1.5.1.3 (including)
WordpressWordpress1.5.2 (including)1.5.2 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.0 (including)2.0 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.0.1 (including)2.0.1 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.0.2 (including)2.0.2 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.0.4 (including)2.0.4 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.0.5 (including)2.0.5 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.0.6 (including)2.0.6 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.0.7 (including)2.0.7 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.0.8 (including)2.0.8 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.0.9 (including)2.0.9 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.0.10 (including)2.0.10 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.0.11 (including)2.0.11 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.1 (including)2.1 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.1.1 (including)2.1.1 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.1.2 (including)2.1.2 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.1.3 (including)2.1.3 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.2 (including)2.2 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.2.1 (including)2.2.1 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.2.2 (including)2.2.2 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.2.3 (including)2.2.3 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.3 (including)2.3 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.3.1 (including)2.3.1 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.3.2 (including)2.3.2 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.3.3 (including)2.3.3 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.5 (including)2.5 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.5.1 (including)2.5.1 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.6 (including)2.6 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.6.1 (including)2.6.1 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.6.2 (including)2.6.2 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.6.3 (including)2.6.3 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.6.5 (including)2.6.5 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.7 (including)2.7 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.7.1 (including)2.7.1 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.8 (including)2.8 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.8.1 (including)2.8.1 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.8.2 (including)2.8.2 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.8.3 (including)2.8.3 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.8.4 (including)2.8.4 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.8.4-a (including)2.8.4-a (including)
WordpressWordpress2.8.5 (including)2.8.5 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.8.5.1 (including)2.8.5.1 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.8.5.2 (including)2.8.5.2 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.8.6 (including)2.8.6 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.9 (including)2.9 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.9.1 (including)2.9.1 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.9.1.1 (including)2.9.1.1 (including)
WordpressWordpress2.9.2 (including)2.9.2 (including)
WordpressWordpress3.0 (including)3.0 (including)
WordpressWordpress3.0.1 (including)3.0.1 (including)
WordpressWordpress3.0.2 (including)3.0.2 (including)
WordpressWordpress3.0.3 (including)3.0.3 (including)
WordpressWordpress3.0.4 (including)3.0.4 (including)
WordpressWordpress3.0.5 (including)3.0.5 (including)
WordpressWordpress3.0.6 (including)3.0.6 (including)
WordpressWordpress3.1 (including)3.1 (including)
WordpressWordpress3.1.1 (including)3.1.1 (including)
WordpressWordpress3.1.2 (including)3.1.2 (including)
WordpressWordpress3.1.3 (including)3.1.3 (including)
WordpressWordpress3.1.4 (including)3.1.4 (including)
WordpressWordpress3.2-beta1 (including)3.2-beta1 (including)
WordpressWordpress3.2.1 (including)3.2.1 (including)
WordpressWordpress3.3 (including)3.3 (including)

Potential Mitigations

  • Use a vetted library or framework that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid [REF-1482].
  • For example, use anti-CSRF packages such as the OWASP CSRFGuard. [REF-330]
  • Another example is the ESAPI Session Management control, which includes a component for CSRF. [REF-45]
  • Use the “double-submitted cookie” method as described by Felten and Zeller:
  • When a user visits a site, the site should generate a pseudorandom value and set it as a cookie on the user’s machine. The site should require every form submission to include this value as a form value and also as a cookie value. When a POST request is sent to the site, the request should only be considered valid if the form value and the cookie value are the same.
  • Because of the same-origin policy, an attacker cannot read or modify the value stored in the cookie. To successfully submit a form on behalf of the user, the attacker would have to correctly guess the pseudorandom value. If the pseudorandom value is cryptographically strong, this will be prohibitively difficult.
  • This technique requires Javascript, so it may not work for browsers that have Javascript disabled. [REF-331]

References

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