Unauthenticated Data Deletion in Advanced Contact Form 7 - Compact DB Plugin

Compliance Impact

The vulnerability allows unauthenticated attackers to delete arbitrary contact form submission entries stored by the plugin. This unauthorized deletion of data could impact data integrity and availability, which are important aspects of compliance with standards like GDPR and HIPAA.

However, there is no direct information provided about specific compliance impacts or regulatory violations caused by this vulnerability.

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Executive Summary

The Advanced Contact Form 7 - Compact DB plugin for WordPress has a vulnerability that allows unauthorized deletion of data. This happens because the function cf7cdb_ajax_delete_user() does not check if the user has permission to delete data, does not verify a security nonce, and does not check if the user owns the data before deleting it.

The function is accessible to both authenticated and unauthenticated users via AJAX actions, and it deletes entries from the plugin's data table based on an attacker-supplied ID. This means an attacker can delete arbitrary contact form submission entries by guessing or iterating through the IDs.

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Impact Analysis

This vulnerability can lead to the unauthorized deletion of contact form submission data stored by the plugin. An attacker can remove important user-submitted information without any authentication or permission.

The impact is data integrity loss, which could disrupt business operations, cause loss of important user feedback or inquiries, and potentially harm trust in the website.

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Detection Guidance

This vulnerability involves unauthorized deletion of data via the cf7cdb_ajax_delete_user() function in the Advanced Contact Form 7 - Compact DB plugin for WordPress. Detection would involve monitoring for suspicious HTTP requests targeting the AJAX actions wp_ajax_cf7cdb_delete and wp_ajax_nopriv_cf7cdb_delete.

You can detect exploitation attempts by searching your web server logs for POST requests to admin-ajax.php with the action parameter set to cf7cdb_delete.

• Example command to search Apache logs: grep 'admin-ajax.php' /var/log/apache2/access.log | grep 'action=cf7cdb_delete'
• Example command to search Nginx logs: grep 'admin-ajax.php' /var/log/nginx/access.log | grep 'action=cf7cdb_delete'

Additionally, monitoring for unexpected deletions in the wp_cf7cdb_data database table may help detect exploitation.

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Mitigation Strategies

To mitigate this vulnerability, immediately update the Advanced Contact Form 7 - Compact DB plugin to a version that includes proper capability checks and nonce verification, if such an update is available.

If an update is not yet available, consider temporarily disabling or removing the plugin to prevent exploitation.

Additionally, restrict access to admin-ajax.php or implement web application firewall (WAF) rules to block unauthorized requests to the cf7cdb_delete action.

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