Attack Vectors

Image Map Pro – Drag-and-drop Builder for Interactive Images (slug: image-map-pro) versions below 5.6.9 are affected by a High-severity Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability (CVE-2022-45850, CVSS 8.8; vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H). Details: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2022-45850

In practical terms, an attacker does not need a login to your WordPress site to initiate the attack, but they do need to trick a site administrator (or another privileged user) into performing an action—most commonly by clicking a link or visiting a webpage that silently triggers a forged request in the background.

This makes CSRF especially relevant to executive and marketing teams because it exploits normal business behavior (reviewing links, approving changes, accessing dashboards) rather than “breaking in” with passwords.

Security Weakness

According to the published advisory, the issue is caused by missing or incorrect nonce validation on one function in Image Map Pro. Nonces are a standard WordPress safeguard designed to ensure that sensitive actions actually originate from a trusted, intentional admin session.

When nonce checks are missing or incorrect, WordPress may accept state-changing requests that were not intentionally initiated inside the admin workflow. In this case, the weakness could allow unauthenticated attackers to invoke that function via a forged request, as long as they can get an administrator to interact with attacker-controlled content.

Source reference: Wordfence Threat Intel entry

Technical or Business Impacts

Business risk: Because CSRF abuses trusted admin sessions, the outcomes can be serious and fast-moving—often happening in a single click. Depending on what the affected function controls, impacts may include unauthorized changes to site configuration or content, disruption of campaign landing pages, and unapproved modifications that undermine brand trust.

Operational risk: If an attacker can trigger actions that affect availability or site behavior, it can lead to downtime, broken user journeys, or degraded performance during critical periods (product launches, paid media spikes, seasonal campaigns).

Compliance and audit risk: For organizations with compliance obligations, unauthorized administrative actions can create audit findings (e.g., weak change control), complicate incident response timelines, and increase the likelihood of reportable events depending on what data or systems are impacted.

Remediation: Update Image Map Pro to version 5.6.9 or newer (patched). As part of your response, consider reviewing admin accounts and recent administrative changes around the time of patching to ensure no unauthorized actions occurred.

Similar Attacks

CSRF is a well-known class of vulnerability that repeatedly appears in CMS plugins and web applications because it targets the “trusted browser session” model. For non-technical stakeholders who want to understand how these attacks work in real scenarios, the following resources provide practical, real-world demonstrations and patterns:

OWASP: Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)

PortSwigger Web Security Academy: CSRF (with hands-on examples)