Executive Summary

This vulnerability is a Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) issue in the Quran Gateway WordPress plugin (versions up to and including 1.5). It occurs because the plugin's function quran_gateway_options lacks nonce validation, which is a security measure to verify that requests are legitimate. As a result, an attacker can trick a site administrator into performing unintended actions, such as modifying the plugin's display settings, by sending a forged request that the administrator unknowingly executes.

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Impact Analysis

This vulnerability allows an unauthenticated attacker to modify the display settings of the Quran Gateway plugin on a WordPress site by tricking an administrator into clicking a malicious link or performing an action. While it does not allow direct data theft or site takeover, it can lead to unauthorized changes in how content is displayed, potentially affecting site integrity and user trust.

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Detection Guidance

This vulnerability can be detected by monitoring for unauthorized or suspicious HTTP requests that attempt to modify the Quran Gateway plugin's display settings without proper nonce validation. Since the vulnerability involves Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) targeting the quran_gateway_options function, you can look for POST requests to the plugin's admin endpoints that change settings without a valid nonce token. Commands to detect such activity could include using network monitoring tools or web server logs to filter for requests to the plugin's admin URLs. For example, using grep on web server logs to find POST requests to admin.php related to quran_gateway: 1. grep 'POST.*admin.php.*quran_gateway' /var/log/apache2/access.log 2. Use tools like curl or Burp Suite to test if nonce tokens are missing or accepted. However, no specific detection commands are provided in the resources. [2, 3]

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Mitigation Strategies

Immediate mitigation steps include updating the Quran Gateway plugin to a version that fixes the missing nonce validation in the quran_gateway_options function. If an update is not yet available, restrict access to the plugin's admin functions to trusted administrators only, and educate administrators to avoid clicking on suspicious links that could trigger forged requests. Additionally, implementing web application firewall (WAF) rules to block CSRF attempts targeting the plugin's settings endpoints can help mitigate exploitation. Since the vulnerability arises from missing nonce validation, adding nonce checks in the plugin's code is the definitive fix. [2, 3]

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Compliance Impact

The provided information does not specify how the Cross-Site Request Forgery vulnerability in the Quran Gateway plugin affects compliance with common standards and regulations such as GDPR or HIPAA.

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