CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2012-4448

Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)

Published: Sep 28, 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
MEDIUM

Cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in wp-admin/index.php in WordPress 3.4.2 allows remote attackers to hijack the authentication of administrators for requests that modify an RSS URL via a dashboard_incoming_links edit action.

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

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Wordpress Wordpress 3.4.2 (including) 3.4.2 (including)
Wordpress Ubuntu artful *
Wordpress Ubuntu hardy *
Wordpress Ubuntu lucid *
Wordpress Ubuntu natty *
Wordpress Ubuntu oneiric *
Wordpress Ubuntu precise *
Wordpress Ubuntu quantal *
Wordpress Ubuntu raring *
Wordpress Ubuntu saucy *
Wordpress Ubuntu upstream *
Wordpress Ubuntu utopic *
Wordpress Ubuntu vivid *
Wordpress Ubuntu wily *
Wordpress Ubuntu yakkety *
Wordpress Ubuntu zesty *

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