CVE-2026-62142

Executive Summary

CVE-2026-62142 is a Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the Melapress WP 2FA WordPress plugin, affecting all versions from the initial release through 4.1.0. The flaw (CWE-352) allows an attacker to induce an authenticated WordPress user — including an administrator — to submit unintended requests to the vulnerable plugin, with CVSS 3.1 scoring 8.8 (High). Because the CVSS vector (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H) reflects full loss of confidentiality, integrity, and availability across the vulnerable component when a victim is successfully socially engineered, unpatched sites running WP 2FA should be treated as high-risk until a vendor fix is released.

Technical Analysis

The vulnerability is classified under CWE-352, Cross-Site Request Forgery. CSRF anomalies arise when a web application performs state-changing actions that are authenticated solely by ambient credentials (such as WordPress authentication cookies) without requiring a per-request, unguessable anti-CSRF token (nonce) validated server-side.

In the WordPress plugin ecosystem, CSRF exposure typically manifests in administrative AJAX handlers registered via wp_ajax_* hooks, form-processing entry points registered with admin_post_*, or REST API routes where the callback does not invoke capability checks combined with a nonce verification step (e.g., check_ajax_referer() or wp_verify_nonce()). Where the plugin exposes configuration actions for a two-factor authentication workflow — such as enabling, disabling, or changing 2FA settings or resetting 2FA state for a user — an attacker who can convince a logged-in privileged user to load an attacker-controlled page can cause the browser to issue the sensitive request automatically.

The provided NVD description does not disclose the specific handler, parameter names, nonce action, or endpoint involved. No function names, file paths, or API routes are stated, and none should be assumed. The vulnerability class — CSRF against an authenticated WordPress plugin action — is the reliable, data-supported characterization.

The network vector (AV:N) and low attack complexity (AC:L) indicate the attack can be launched remotely from any internet-connected host, while UI:R confirms that user interaction (luring the victim to an attacker page while authenticated) is required. Privileges required are None (PR:N) in the sense that the attacker needs no account on the target site, but the practical impact depends on the privilege level of the victim the attacker can lure.

No public proof-of-concept, exploit code, or Nuclei template exists as of this writing, and EPSS has not yet assigned a score. The absence of an exploit does not reduce the structural risk: CSRF exploit scaffolding requires only trivial HTML in a malicious page once the target action is known.

Exploitation Scenarios

No public PoC is available; the attack chain below is inferred from the vulnerability class (CWE-352) and the CVSS vector, not from disclosed implementation details.

1. Reconnaissance / target identification. The attacker enumerates internet-facing WordPress sites and fingerprints the presence and version of the WP 2FA plugin, for example by requesting predictable plugin asset paths such as /wp-content/plugins/wp-2fa/ (a standard WordPress convention). Sites returning version 4.1.0 or earlier are flagged as potentially vulnerable, and the attacker inspects publicly served plugin assets to map the plugin's AJAX or form actions.

2. Triggering the flaw class. The attacker builds a malicious web page containing a hidden auto-submitting form — or an image/script request — that targets an authenticated, state-changing action within the vulnerable plugin. The exact endpoint, parameter names, and nonce behavior are not disclosed in the source data; exploitation requires the actor to determine a state-changing action that is not protected by a validated anti-CSRF token.

3. Delivery / execution. The attacker delivers the page via phishing email, a compromised third-party site, a malicious advertisement, or a forum/social post, and persuades an authenticated WordPress user with sufficient privileges — ideally an administrator, whose account has access to plugin settings — to load the page while their session cookie is active. Because the request originates from the victim's browser, it carries the victim's session automatically. UI:R reflects this requirement.

4. Post-exploitation impact. Successful CSRF against a privileged user permits unauthorized state changes in the plugin's security-sensitive domain. Given that WP 2FA governs two-factor authentication enforcement, an attacker-induced settings change could weaken or disable a site's second authentication factor for targeted accounts, removing a key account-takeover barrier. The CVSS subscores (C:H/I:H/A:H) indicate high confidentiality, integrity, and availability impact within the vulnerable component, including possible tampering with 2FA enrollment or reset flows that could enable subsequent account compromise.

Impact Assessment

Affected systems are WordPress installations running the Melapress WP 2FA plugin at version 4.1.0 or earlier, with no upper version bound because no patch exists. Because WP 2FA controls a security-critical control plane (enforcement of two-factor authentication), the blast radius extends beyond the plugin itself: an induced change to 2FA state can degrade the site's overall authentication posture and enable cascading account or site compromise. The CVSS 3.1 base score of 8.8 maps directly to the vector: network-reachable, low complexity, no attacker privileges on the target, user interaction required, scope unchanged, and high impact to all three security properties. From a business perspective, affected organizations face potential loss of control over administrative access, regulatory exposure for failing to maintain strong authentication, and downstream data-integrity risk if administrator accounts are subsequently abused. Any WordPress site relying on WP 2FA as a mandatory control should be considered at elevated risk until remediation is available.

Detection Guidance

Sigma Rule

title: Potential WP 2FA CSRF State-Changing Request to WordPress Admin
id: 7c1e2a34-9f58-4b2e-8b3a-6d0c5a1f9e42
status: experimental
description: Detects POST requests to WordPress admin/AJAX endpoints with a cross-site referer, indicative of CSRF attempts against the WP 2FA plugin.
references:
  - https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-62142
author: Threat Intelligence
date: 2026/01/01
logsource:
  category: webserver
detection:
  selection_method:
    cs-method: 'POST'
  selection_wp:
    cs-uri-query|contains:
      - 'wp-admin/admin-ajax.php'
      - 'wp-admin/admin-post.php'
      - 'wp-admin/options.php'
  selection_plugin:
    cs-uri-query|contains: 'wp-2fa'
  selection_referer:
    cs-referer|contains:
      - 'wp-2fa'
  filter_internal:
    cs-referer|contains: '%YOURDOMAIN%'
  condition: selection_method and (selection_wp or selection_plugin) and not filter_internal
falsepositives:
  - Legitimate administrative actions submitted from unrelated interfaces
  - Browser extensions stripping or rewriting referer headers
level: medium
tags:
  - attack.t1190
  - cve.2026.62142

YARA Rule

rule CVE_2026_62142_WP2FA_CSRF_Page
{
    meta:
        description = "Detects HTML pages likely crafted as CSRF vectors against the Melapress WP 2FA WordPress plugin"
        author = "Threat Intelligence"
        reference = "https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-62142"
        date = "2026-01-01"
        severity = "high"

    strings:
        $wpadmin = "wp-admin/admin-ajax.php" ascii nocase
        $adminpost = "wp-admin/admin-post.php" ascii nocase
        $plugin = "wp-2fa" ascii nocase
        $autosubmit = "onload=" ascii nocase
        $formsubmit = ".submit()" ascii nocase
        $hidden = "type=\"hidden\"" ascii nocase

    condition:
        filesize < 200KB and
        (($wpadmin or $adminpost) and $hidden) and
        (($plugin and ($autosubmit or $formsubmit)) or ($autosubmit and $formsubmit))
}

Suricata IDS Rule

alert http any any -> any any (msg:"CVE-2026-62142 Possible WP 2FA CSRF State-Changing Request"; flow:established,to_server; http.method; content:"POST"; http.uri; content:"wp-admin"; http.uri; content:"admin-ajax.php"|"admin-post.php"; http.referer; content:"http"; http.referer; content:"wp-2fa"; nocase; http.header; content:"Content-Type|3a| application/x-www-form-urlencoded"; classtype:attempted-admin; sid:202662142; rev:1; reference:cve,2026-62142; metadata:affected_product WP_2FA, attack_target Web_Server, created_at 2026_01_01, cve CVE_2026_62142;)

Elastic Detection

sequence by source.ip with maxspan=60s
  [network where
     http.request.method == "POST" and
     http.request.referrer : "*" and
     not http.request.referrer : "*wp-admin*"]
  [network where
     http.request.method == "POST" and
     http.request.referrer : "*" and
     not http.request.referrer : "*wp-admin*" and
     (http.request.body.bytes : "*wp-2fa*" or url.path : "*admin-ajax.php*" or url.path : "*admin-post.php*")]

Splunk SPL Query

index=web sourcetype=access_combined
| search method=POST
| eval referer=coalesce(referer, referrer)
| eval is_admin_path=if(match(uri_path, "(?i)/wp-admin/(admin-ajax\.php|admin-post\.php|options\.php)"), 1, 0)
| eval same_site_referer=if(match(referer, "(?i)^https?://[^/]*".urldecode("%YOURDOMAIN%")), 1, 0)
| stats count min(_time) as first_seen max(_time) as last_seen values(uri_path) as paths values(referer) as referers
    by src_ip dest_host
| where count > 0 AND same_site_referer = 0 AND referer != "-"
| convert ctime(first_seen) ctime(last_seen)
| table src_ip dest_host count first_seen last_seen paths referers

Wazuh OSSEC Rule

<group name="web,wordpress,wp-2fa,">
  <rule id="100642" level="10">
    <decoded_as>web-accesslog</decoded_as>
    <match>POST</match>
    <regex>/wp-admin/(admin-ajax\.php|admin-post\.php|options\.php)</regex>
    <regex>wp-2fa</regex>
    <description>CVE-2026-62142: Possible CSRF attack against Melapress WP 2FA plugin (state-changing request with plugin reference).</description>
    <mitre>
      <id>T1190</id>
    </mitre>
    <group>cve_2026_62142,csrf,</group>
  </rule>

  <rule id="100643" level="12">
    <if_sid>100642</if_sid>
    <regex>Referer: https?://(?!.*yourdomain)</regex>
    <description>CVE-2026-62142: WP 2FA state-changing POST with off-site referer - suspected CSRF exploitation.</description>
    <mitre>
      <id>T1190</id>
    </mitre>
    <group>cve_2026_62142,csrf,exploit_attempt,</group>
  </rule>
</group>

Mitigation & Patch Guidance

Patch confidence: 0/4 (UNPATCHED — no patch evidence from any tracked source). No vendor advisory, fixed version, or workaround is currently published, and OSV shows no tracked packages.

1. Immediate mitigations. Until a fix exists, consider disabling or deactivating the WP 2FA plugin if your authentication strategy permits; otherwise isolate the plugin's administrative function to trusted operators. Enforce the WordPress-wide control of requiring nonce-bearing requests is not plugin-specific, so operators should instead restrict administrative dashboard access by IP allowlisting at the WAF/reverse-proxy layer, and deploy a Web Application Firewall rule that rejects state-changing POSTs to wp-admin/admin-ajax.php and wp-admin/admin-post.php when the Referer header points off-site (see the Suricata/Elastic logic above as a template). Apply SameSite=Lax or SameSite=Strict to the WordPress authentication cookies, which provides strong browser-level CSRF protection for cross-site requests. Reduce the attack surface by preventing unnecessary exposure of wp-admin to the public internet and by enforcing phishing-resistant MFA that does not rely solely on the plugin.

2. Patch/upgrade steps. There is no upgrade path at this time. Monitor the vendor (Melapress) and the WordPress plugin repository for a WP 2FA release exceeding 4.1.0, and treat any such release as the remediation trigger. Maintain an asset inventory that flags all installations still reporting version <= 4.1.0.

3. Long-term hardening. Maintain a patch-tracking workflow keyed to vendor advisories and CVE feeds for all WordPress plugins; minimize installed plugin count; enforce least privilege so that only a small set of administrators can reach plugin security settings; adopt secure-by-default WordPress controls (nonce usage, cookie SameSite attributes, CSRF tokens in custom endpoints); and require phishing-resistant authentication factors rather than relying exclusively on a single plugin for two-factor enforcement. Given CISA KEV does not currently list this issue and no in-the-wild exploitation has been reported, prioritize based on your exposure profile, but treat the 8.8 score and the security-critical nature of 2FA as strong drivers for rapid mitigation.

References

1. NVD — CVE-2026-62142: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-62142
2. CWE-352 — Cross-Site Request Forgery: https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/352.html
3. Melapress WP 2FA product page: https://melapress.com/wordpress-2fa/
4. WordPress Plugin Directory — WP 2FA: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-2fa/
5. CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog (currently does NOT list CVE-2026-62142): https://www.cisa.gov/known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog

No threat actor campaigns or exploit-in-the-wild evidence are associated with CVE-2026-62142 in the provided data; exploitation status remains theoretical based on the vulnerability class.