CVE-2023-0968
Published: 03 March 2023
Summary
CVE-2023-0968 is a medium-severity Cross-site Scripting (CWE-79) vulnerability in Kibokolabs Watu Quiz. Its CVSS base score is 6.1 (Medium).
Operationally, ranked in the top 10.5% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
Deeper analysis
The Watu Quiz plugin for WordPress is affected by a reflected cross-site scripting vulnerability in versions up to and including 3.3.9. The flaw resides in the handling of the dn, email, points, and date parameters within the takings.php view, where insufficient input sanitization and output escaping allow arbitrary script injection. It is tracked as CWE-79 with a CVSS 3.1 score of 6.1.
Unauthenticated attackers can exploit the issue by crafting malicious links that, when clicked by a victim, cause injected scripts to execute in the context of the affected site. Successful exploitation enables theft of session tokens or other client-side actions without requiring authentication or elevated privileges on the target WordPress instance.
Advisories from Wordfence indicate that the vulnerabilities were addressed in subsequent plugin releases, with the vendor updating the affected code paths to enforce proper escaping. Site administrators are advised to apply the latest version of the Watu Quiz plugin promptly.
EPSS for this CVE rose from lower values at disclosure to a peak of 0.1585 before receding to the current 0.0462, indicating a period of increased exploitation interest after public release.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2023-12953
Vulnerability details
The Watu Quiz plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Reflected Cross-Site Scripting via the ‘dn’, 'email', 'points', and 'date' parameters in versions up to, and including, 3.3.9 due to insufficient input sanitization and output escaping. This makes it possible for…
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unauthenticated attackers to inject arbitrary web scripts in pages that execute if they can successfully trick a user into performing an action such as clicking on a link.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
No named actor attribution yet. ATT&CK technique mapping in progress for this CVE.
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Likely Mitigating Controls AI
Per-CVE control mapping for this CVE has not run yet; the list below is derived from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry.
Penetration testing submits XSS payloads to web applications, detecting cross-site scripting flaws for subsequent remediation.
Validates web inputs to reject script-related content that could produce XSS.
Output validation against expected content can reject or sanitize script content in generated web pages, reducing XSS exploitability.