WordPress Nictitate Theme <= 1.1.4 is vulnerable to Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF)

Patch priority: low
Patch within 30 days Low priority
4.3
Medium severity CVSS 3.1 score
Published on 29 March, 2024

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Vulnerability description

Dhabaleshwar Das discovered and reported this Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in WordPress Nictitate Theme to Patchstack.

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How to reproduce

The "Nictitate" theme lacks proper nonce implementation for the "dismiss_admin_notices" action, exposing users to Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) attacks. This vulnerability could allow an attacker to perform malicious actions on behalf of the authenticated user without their consent.

1- First install the "Nictitate" theme and then activate it.

2- After activation, you would see a notice on top of the page, "This theme requires the following plugin: Kopa Nictitate Toolkit..........." just click on "Dismiss this notice" and then intercept the request, you'll see that no nonce is implemented in the request.

3- This absence of nonce causes CSRF attacks, wherein an attacker can forge a request to perform unauthorized actions on behalf of the user who is currently authenticated.


The crafted HTML request can be seen here:

<html>
<!-- CSRF PoC --->
<body>
<script>history.pushState('', '', '/')</script>
<form action="http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin/themes.php">
<input type="hidden" name="tgmpa&#45;dismiss" value="dismiss&#95;admin&#95;notices" />
<input type="submit" value="Submit request" />
</form>
</body>
</html>

See researcher files below

How to disclose

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Link to updated version
Software
Nictitate
Type
Theme
PSID
020cf5aa1ba2
Vulnerable versions
<= 1.1.4
Classification
Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
OWASP Top 10
A1: Broken Access Control
Required privilege
Unauthenticated
Published
on 29 March, 2024
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