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A popular WordPress privacy compliance plugin with over 800,000 installations recently patched a stored XSS vulnerability that could allow an attacker to upload malicious scripts to launch attacks against site visitors.<\/p>\n
The Complianz plugin for WordPress is a powerful tool that helps website owners comply with privacy regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).<\/p>\n
The plugin manages multiple facets of user privacy, including blocking third-party cookies, managing cookie consent (including by sub-region), and managing various aspects related to cookie banners.<\/p>\n
Its versatility and usefulness can explain the popularity of the tool that currently has more than 800,000 installations.<\/p>\n
The Complianz WordPress plugin was discovered to have a stored XSS vulnerability, which is a type of vulnerability that allows a user to upload a malicious script directly to a website’s server. Unlike reflected XSS, which requires a website user to click on a link, stored XSS involves a malicious script stored and published from the target website’s server.<\/p>\n
The vulnerability is in Complianz’s administration settings, which takes the form of the lack of two security features.<\/p>\n
1. Sanitization at entrance<\/strong> the officer The WordPress Developer Guide describes data sanitization<\/a> how:<\/strong><\/p>\n “Input sanitization is the process of securing\/cleaning\/filtering input data. Validation is preferred over sanitization because validation is more specific. But when “more specific” is not possible, sanitization is the best thing.”<\/p>\n 2. Exhaust outlet<\/strong> The vulnerability requires an attacker to obtain administrator and higher permission levels to execute the attack. This may be the reason why this vulnerability has a score of 4.4 out of 10, ten representing the highest level of vulnerability.<\/p>\n The vulnerability only affects specific types of installations as well.<\/p>\n According to Wordfence:<\/strong><\/p>\n “This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with administrator-level permissions and above, to inject arbitrary web scripts into pages that will be executed whenever a user accesses an injected page.<\/p>\n This only affects multisite installations and installations where unfiltered_html has been disabled.”<\/p>\n The vulnerability affects Complianz versions equal to or lower than version 6.5.5. Users are advised to upgrade to version 6.5.6 or higher.<\/p>\n Read Wordfence’s warning about the vulnerability:<\/strong><\/p>\n
The plugin didn’t have enough input and output sanitization. Input sanitization is a standard process of checking what is entered into a website, such as a form field, to ensure that what is entered is what is expected, such as text input instead of loading a script.<\/p>\n
The plugin lacked Output Escaping, which is a security process that removes unwanted data before it is rendered to a user.<\/p>\nHow serious is the vulnerability?<\/h2>\n
Update to the latest version<\/h2>\n