CVE-2022-4363 is a Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability affecting the Wholesale Market WordPress plugin (versions prior to 2.2.2) and the Wholesale Market for WooCommerce WordPress plugin (versions prior to 2.0.1). The vulnerability arises due to an inadequate CSRF protection mechanism when updating plugin settings. Specifically, the plugins fail to properly verify the authenticity of requests made to update their configuration, allowing an attacker to craft a malicious request that, when executed by an authenticated administrator, can alter the plugin’s settings without the administrator’s consent. This flaw is classified under CWE-352, which denotes improper verification of a request’s origin, enabling unauthorized state-changing actions. The CVSS v3.1 base score is 6.5 (medium severity), with the vector indicating network attack vector (AV:N), low attack complexity (AC:L), no privileges required (PR:N), user interaction required (UI:R), unchanged scope (S:U), no confidentiality impact (C:N), high integrity impact (I:H), and no availability impact (A:N). The attack requires the victim to be an authenticated admin who interacts with a malicious link or page, which then triggers the unauthorized settings change. While no known exploits are currently in the wild, the vulnerability poses a significant risk because it allows attackers to manipulate critical plugin configurations, potentially leading to further compromise or disruption of e-commerce operations. The lack of a patch link suggests that users should verify plugin versions and update promptly once fixes are available.

For European organizations using WordPress sites with the Wholesale Market or Wholesale Market for WooCommerce plugins, this vulnerability can lead to unauthorized modification of plugin settings by attackers exploiting CSRF. Such unauthorized changes could disrupt wholesale market operations, alter pricing, inventory, or access controls, potentially causing financial loss, reputational damage, or compliance issues under regulations like GDPR if customer data integrity is affected. Since the attack requires an authenticated admin to interact with a malicious request, social engineering or phishing campaigns targeting administrators could be leveraged. The integrity impact is high, meaning attackers can change critical configurations, possibly enabling further exploitation or persistent backdoors. Given the widespread use of WooCommerce and WordPress in European SMEs and e-commerce sectors, the threat could affect a broad range of businesses, especially those relying on wholesale market plugins for supply chain management. The absence of confidentiality and availability impacts limits data leakage or downtime risks directly from this vulnerability, but the integrity compromise can cascade into more severe consequences if leveraged as a foothold.

1. Immediate mitigation involves updating the Wholesale Market and Wholesale Market for WooCommerce plugins to versions 2.2.2 and 2.0.1 respectively, or later once official patches are released. 2. Until patches are applied, restrict administrative access to trusted networks or VPNs to reduce exposure to CSRF attacks. 3. Implement web application firewalls (WAFs) with rules to detect and block CSRF attack patterns targeting plugin settings endpoints. 4. Educate administrators about phishing and social engineering risks to reduce the likelihood of interacting with malicious links. 5. Employ security plugins that add additional CSRF tokens or nonce verification layers to WordPress admin actions. 6. Regularly audit plugin settings and logs for unauthorized changes to detect exploitation attempts early. 7. Consider disabling or removing the affected plugins if they are not critical or if no immediate patch is available. 8. Monitor official vendor channels and WPScan advisories for updates and apply patches promptly.