CVE-2024-3495

published 2024-05-22

CVE-2024-3495: The Country State City Dropdown CF7 plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to SQL Injection via the ‘cnt’ and 'sid' parameters in versions up to, and including…

Priority P1 85 critical 9.8 CVSS 3.1

AV N AC L PR N UI N S U C H I H A H

ITW EXPLOIT VulnCheck KEV

The Country State City Dropdown CF7 plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to SQL Injection via the ‘cnt’ and 'sid' parameters in versions up to, and including, 2.7.2 due to insufficient escaping on the user supplied parameter and lack of sufficient preparation on the existing SQL query. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to append additional SQL queries into already existing queries that can be used to extract sensitive information from the database.

Affected

1 ranges

Vendor	Product	Version range	Fixed in
trustyplugins	country_state_city_dropdown_cf7	<= 2.7.2	—

Detection & IOCs extracted from sources · hover to see the quote

url /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php↗

path /wp-content/plugins/country-state-city-auto-dropdown↗

command action=tc_csca_get_cities&nonce_ajax={{nonce}}&sid=1+or+0+union+select+concat(0x64617461626173653a,(select%20md5({{num}})),0x7c76657273696f6e3a,(select%20md5({{num}})),0x7c757365723a,user()),2,3--+-↗

path /wp-content/plugins/country-state-city-auto-dropdown/trunk/includes/ajax-actions.php↗

• → Monitor POST requests to /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php with the action parameter set to 'tc_csca_get_cities' — this is the specific AJAX action handler vulnerable to SQL injection via the 'cnt' and 'sid' parameters. ↗
• → Presence of the plugin path '/wp-content/plugins/country-state-city-auto-dropdown' in HTTP responses can be used to fingerprint vulnerable WordPress installations for targeted exploitation. ↗
• → The exploit extracts a nonce value from the page using the regex '"nonce":"(\S*)"' before submitting the malicious AJAX request — look for sequential GET then POST patterns to the same WordPress host. ↗
• → The attack is unauthenticated (no login required). Any POST to admin-ajax.php with action=tc_csca_get_cities from an unauthenticated session should be treated as suspicious. ↗

• · The SQL injection payload uses hex-encoded string literals (e.g., 0x64617461626173653a) to obfuscate the UNION SELECT output — WAF rules must account for hex-encoded bypass techniques in POST body parameters. ↗

CVSS provenance

nvd v3.1 9.8 CRITICAL CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

vulncheck 9.8 CRITICAL

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