This article is a part of our Vulnerability Database (back to index)
Cross-Site Request Forgery occurrences in Chameleon Css
The Chameleon CSS WordPress plugin through 1.2 does not have any CSRF and capability checks in all its AJAX calls, allowing any authenticated user, such as subscriber to call them and perform unauthorised actions. One of AJAX call, remove_css, also does not sanitise or escape the css_id POST parameter before using it in a SQL statement, leading to a SQL Injection (2021-11-08, CVE-2021-24626)
Why Cross-Site Request Forgery can be dangerous
The absence of Anti-CSRF tokens may lead to a Cross-Site Request Forgery attack that can result in executing a specific application action as another logged in user, e.g. steal their account by changing their email and password or silently adding a new admin user account when executed from the administrator account.
The attacker may copy one of your web application forms, e.g. email/password change form.
The webpage will contain a form with the exact set of fields as the original application but with input values already provided and the submit button replaced with a Javascript code causing auto-submission. When the page is accessed the form will be immediately submitted and page contents replaced with a valid content or a redirect to your original application.
One of your application users who is already logged in can be then tricked to navigate to such malicious page e.g. by clicking a link in a phishing email, and the pre-populated form content will be submitted to your application like it would be submitted by your user.