The OptinMonster plugin is affected by a high-severity flaw that allows unauthorized API access and sensitive information disclosure on roughly a million WordPress sites.
Tracked as CVE-2021-39341, the flaw was discovered by researcher Chloe Chamberland on September 28, 2021, with a patch becoming available on October 7, 2021.
All users of the OptinMonster plugin are advised to upgrade to version 2.6.5 or later, as all earlier versions are affected.
API trouble
OptinMonster is one of the most popular WordPress plugins used to create beautiful opt-in forms that help site owners convert visitors to subscribers/customers
It is essentially a lead generator and monetization tool, and thanks to its ease of use and abundance of features, it’s deployed on approximately a million sites.
An attacker holding the API key could make changes on the OptinMonster accounts or even plant malicious JavaScript snippets on the site.
The site would execute this code every time an OptinMonster element was activated by a visitor without anyone’s knowledge.
To make matters worse, the attacker wouldn’t even have to authenticate on the targeted site to access the API endpoint, as an HTTP request would bypass security checks under certain, easy to meet conditions.
all API keys that could have been stolen were invalidated immediately, and site owners were forced to generate new keys.
If you are a site owner, try to use the minimum number of plugins to cover the necessary functionality and usability and apply plugin updates as soon as possible.
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