CVE-2023-4248 is a medium-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability affecting the GiveWP plugin for WordPress, a widely used donation and fundraising platform. The vulnerability exists in versions up to and including 2.33.3 due to missing or incorrect nonce validation in the function give_stripe_disconnect_connect_stripe_account. This function handles the disconnection of the Stripe payment integration within the plugin. Because of the improper nonce validation, an unauthenticated attacker can craft a malicious request that, if executed by a site administrator (e.g., by clicking a link or visiting a malicious webpage), can cause the administrator’s session to perform unintended actions. Specifically, the attacker can deactivate the Stripe integration settings of the plugin without the administrator’s consent. This attack does not require authentication but does require user interaction (UI:R in CVSS terms). The impact affects the integrity and availability of the payment processing configuration, potentially disrupting donation processing capabilities. The CVSS 3.1 base score is 5.4 (medium), reflecting network attack vector, low attack complexity, no privileges required, user interaction required, unchanged scope, no confidentiality impact, low integrity impact, and low availability impact. No known exploits are currently reported in the wild. The vulnerability stems from CWE-352, which is a common web security weakness related to CSRF attacks where state-changing requests lack proper anti-CSRF tokens or nonce validation. Given the plugin’s role in managing donations, successful exploitation could disrupt fundraising activities and cause financial or reputational damage to organizations relying on GiveWP for payment processing.

For European organizations using the GiveWP plugin, this vulnerability could lead to unauthorized deactivation of Stripe payment integration, effectively disabling the ability to process donations via Stripe. This disruption can cause immediate financial impact by halting donation flows, especially critical for non-profits, charities, and fundraising campaigns that rely heavily on continuous donation streams. Additionally, the integrity of the donation platform is compromised, potentially eroding trust among donors if payment processing is unreliable or interrupted. While the vulnerability does not directly expose sensitive data or allow theft of funds, the denial of service to payment processing can have significant operational consequences. Organizations with limited technical resources or delayed patching processes may be more vulnerable to exploitation. The requirement for user interaction (an administrator clicking a malicious link) means that social engineering or phishing campaigns targeting site administrators could be an effective attack vector. Given the widespread use of WordPress and the popularity of GiveWP in the European non-profit sector, the impact could be broad if exploited at scale.

To mitigate this vulnerability, European organizations should immediately update the GiveWP plugin to a version later than 2.33.3 where the nonce validation issue is fixed. If an update is not immediately available, administrators should implement compensating controls such as restricting administrative access to trusted networks and users, employing web application firewalls (WAFs) with rules to detect and block CSRF attack patterns, and educating site administrators about the risks of clicking unknown or suspicious links. Additionally, organizations should enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA) for WordPress admin accounts to reduce the risk of session hijacking or unauthorized access. Regular security audits and monitoring of plugin configurations can help detect unauthorized changes to payment integrations. Finally, consider isolating critical payment configuration pages or requiring re-authentication for sensitive actions to reduce the risk of CSRF exploitation.