CVE-2021-24565: Contact Form 7 Captcha < 0.0.9 - CSRF to Stored XSS

Severity: high (CVSS 8.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.7% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2021-08-23 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-79

Description

The Contact Form 7 Captcha WordPress plugin before 0.0.9 does not have any CSRF check in place when saving its settings, allowing attacker to make a logged in user with the manage_options change them. Furthermore, the settings are not escaped when output in attributes, leading to a Stored Cross-Site Scripting issue.

Affected products

Contact Form 7 Captcha: before 0.0.9 — fixed in 0.0.9

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Contact Form 7 Captcha 0.0.9. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/2570402
https://wpscan.com/vulnerability/97bfef5e-2ee0-491a-a931-4f44c83e5be0
https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/2570402
https://wpscan.com/vulnerability/97bfef5e-2ee0-491a-a931-4f44c83e5be0

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