WordPress Quiz And Survey Master 4.7.8 / 4.5.4 XSS / CSRF
Posted on 16 December 2016
Details ================ Software: Quiz And Survey Master (Formerly Quiz Master Next) Version: 4.5.4,4.7.8 Homepage: https://wordpress.org/plugins/quiz-master-next/ Advisory report: https://security.dxw.com/advisories/csrfstored-xss-in-quiz-and-survey-master-formerly-quiz-master-next-allows-unauthenticated-attackers-to-do-almost-anything-an-admin-can/ CVE: Awaiting assignment CVSS: 5.8 (Medium; AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:N) Description ================ CSRF/stored XSS in Quiz And Survey Master (Formerly Quiz Master Next) allows unauthenticated attackers to do almost anything an admin can Vulnerability ================ A CSRFA vulnerabilityA allows an unauthenticated attacker to add questions to existing quizzes. The question_name parameter is put into a manually-constructed JavaScript objectA and escaped with esc_js() (php/qmn_options_questions_tab.php line 499). If the user (or attacker) creates a new question on a quizA containingA a<script>alert(1)</script>a in the question_name field then aquestion: a<script>alert(1)</script>a,a will get outputA inside the JS object. All good so far. However, inA js/admin_question.js on line 205, we see this line, as part of some JS-generated HTML: jQuery('<textarea/>').html(questions_list[i].question.replace(/"/g, '"').replace(/'/g, "'")).text()+ This looks okay. Weare creating a TEXTAREA element, setting its HTML to the value of the question_name parameter, and extracting the .text() of it. If we did jQuery(a<textarea/>a).html(a<script>alert(1)</script>a).text() we would get aalert(1)a as the output. However, thatas not how inline JavaScript gets parsed. Between a <script> and a </script>, the HTML parser actually parses a<a as a<a not as a<a. So if we doA jQuery(a<textarea/>a).html(a<script>alert(1)</script>a).text() we get a<script>alert(1)</script>a. And since a<script>alert(1)</script>a doesnat appear anywhere in the page, Chromeas reflected XSS mitigation measures are not activated. ThusA the stored XSS attack can be executed immediately. Proof of concept ================ Click the submit button on the following page (in a real attack the form can be submitted without user interaction): <form method="POST" action="http://localhost/wp-admin/admin.php?page=mlw_quiz_options&quiz_id=1"> <input type="text" name="question_type" value="0"> <input type="text" name="question_name" value="<script>alert(1)</script>"> <input type="text" name="question_submission" value="new_question"> <input type="text" name="quiz_id" value="1"> <input type="submit"> </form> Mitigations ================ Upgrade to version 4.7.9 or later. Disclosure policy ================ dxw believes in responsible disclosure. Your attention is drawn to our disclosure policy: https://security.dxw.com/disclosure/ Please contact us on security@dxw.com to acknowledge this report if you received it via a third party (for example, plugins@wordpress.org) as they generally cannot communicate with us on your behalf. This vulnerability will be published if we do not receive a response to this report with 14 days. Timeline ================ 2015-09-14: Discovered 2016-12-07: Reported to vendor viaA https://quizandsurveymaster.com/contact-us/ 2016-12-07: Requested CVE 2016-12-13: Vendor replied 2016-12-14: Vendor reportedA issue fixed in version 4.7.9 2016-12-15: Advisory published Discovered by dxw: ================ Tom Adams Please visit security.dxw.com for more information.
