Authorization Bypass in JoomSport WordPress Plugin

Executive Summary

The JoomSport plugin for WordPress has an authorization bypass vulnerability in all versions up to and including 5.7.8. This means the plugin does not properly check if a user is allowed to perform certain actions.

As a result, authenticated users with subscriber-level access or higher can create or modify season groups, group names, participants, and round-type options without proper permission.

Exploitation requires obtaining a specific token called joomsportajaxnonce, which is exposed on frontend pages that display a JoomSport shortcode.

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Detection Guidance

This vulnerability can be detected by monitoring for unauthorized attempts to create or modify season groups, group names, participants, or round-type options in the JoomSport plugin. Since exploitation requires obtaining the joomsportajaxnonce exposed on frontend pages with JoomSport shortcodes, checking for unusual POST requests containing this nonce from subscriber-level users or above may indicate exploitation attempts.

You can use network monitoring tools or web server logs to look for suspicious POST requests to endpoints handling JoomSport AJAX actions that include the joomsportajaxnonce parameter.

Example commands to detect such activity might include:

• Using grep on web server logs to find POST requests containing 'joomsportajaxnonce': grep -i 'POST' /var/log/apache2/access.log | grep 'joomsportajaxnonce'
• Using tcpdump to capture HTTP POST traffic to the server and filter for joomsportajaxnonce: tcpdump -A -s 0 'tcp port 80 and (((ip[2:2] - ((ip[0]&0xf)<<2)) - ((tcp[12]&0xf0)>>2)) != 0)' | grep 'joomsportajaxnonce'
• Using curl or similar tools to test if the nonce is exposed on frontend pages rendering JoomSport shortcodes by fetching such pages and searching for the nonce value.

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Impact Analysis

This vulnerability allows attackers with low-level authenticated access to manipulate data within the JoomSport plugin.

• They can create arbitrary season groups.
• They can modify existing group names.
• They can change participants and round-type options.

Such unauthorized modifications could lead to data integrity issues and potentially disrupt the intended functionality of sports team and league management on the affected WordPress site.

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Compliance Impact

The vulnerability allows authenticated users with subscriber-level access to bypass authorization controls and modify or create season groups and related data within the JoomSport plugin. However, there is no direct information provided about the impact of this vulnerability on compliance with common standards and regulations such as GDPR or HIPAA.

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Mitigation Strategies

To mitigate this vulnerability, you should update the JoomSport plugin to a version later than 5.7.8 where the authorization bypass issue is fixed.

Additionally, restrict subscriber-level access and above from performing unauthorized actions until the update is applied.

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