Htaccess Cross-Site Request Forgery

The BestWebSoft Htaccess plugin through 1.8.1 for WordPress allows wp-admin/admin.php?page=htaccess.php&action=htaccess_editor CSRF. The flag htccss_nonce_name passes the nonce to WordPress but the plugin does not validate it correctly, resulting in a wrong implementation of anti-CSRF protection. In this way, an attacker is able to direct the victim to a malicious web page that modifies the .htaccess file, and takes control of the website. (2020-02-06, CVE-2020-8658)

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.