Vulnerabilities > CVE-2010-1670 - Improper Authentication vulnerability in Mahara

047910
CVSS 7.5 - HIGH
Attack vector
NETWORK
Attack complexity
LOW
Privileges required
NONE
Confidentiality impact
PARTIAL
Integrity impact
PARTIAL
Availability impact
PARTIAL
network
low complexity
mahara
CWE-287
nessus

Summary

Mahara before 1.0.15, 1.1.x before 1.1.9, and 1.2.x before 1.2.5 has improper configuration options for authentication plugins associated with logins that use the single sign-on (SSO) functionality, which allows remote attackers to bypass authentication via an empty password. NOTE: some of these details are obtained from third party information.

Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE)

Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC)

  • Authentication Abuse
    An attacker obtains unauthorized access to an application, service or device either through knowledge of the inherent weaknesses of an authentication mechanism, or by exploiting a flaw in the authentication scheme's implementation. In such an attack an authentication mechanism is functioning but a carefully controlled sequence of events causes the mechanism to grant access to the attacker. This attack may exploit assumptions made by the target's authentication procedures, such as assumptions regarding trust relationships or assumptions regarding the generation of secret values. This attack differs from Authentication Bypass attacks in that Authentication Abuse allows the attacker to be certified as a valid user through illegitimate means, while Authentication Bypass allows the user to access protected material without ever being certified as an authenticated user. This attack does not rely on prior sessions established by successfully authenticating users, as relied upon for the "Exploitation of Session Variables, Resource IDs and other Trusted Credentials" attack patterns.
  • Exploiting Trust in Client (aka Make the Client Invisible)
    An attack of this type exploits a programs' vulnerabilities in client/server communication channel authentication and data integrity. It leverages the implicit trust a server places in the client, or more importantly, that which the server believes is the client. An attacker executes this type of attack by placing themselves in the communication channel between client and server such that communication directly to the server is possible where the server believes it is communicating only with a valid client. There are numerous variations of this type of attack.
  • Utilizing REST's Trust in the System Resource to Register Man in the Middle
    This attack utilizes a REST(REpresentational State Transfer)-style applications' trust in the system resources and environment to place man in the middle once SSL is terminated. Rest applications premise is that they leverage existing infrastructure to deliver web services functionality. An example of this is a Rest application that uses HTTP Get methods and receives a HTTP response with an XML document. These Rest style web services are deployed on existing infrastructure such as Apache and IIS web servers with no SOAP stack required. Unfortunately from a security standpoint, there frequently is no interoperable identity security mechanism deployed, so Rest developers often fall back to SSL to deliver security. In large data centers, SSL is typically terminated at the edge of the network - at the firewall, load balancer, or router. Once the SSL is terminated the HTTP request is in the clear (unless developers have hashed or encrypted the values, but this is rare). The attacker can utilize a sniffer such as Wireshark to snapshot the credentials, such as username and password that are passed in the clear once SSL is terminated. Once the attacker gathers these credentials, they can submit requests to the web service provider just as authorized user do. There is not typically an authentication on the client side, beyond what is passed in the request itself so once this is compromised, then this is generally sufficient to compromise the service's authentication scheme.
  • Man in the Middle Attack
    This type of attack targets the communication between two components (typically client and server). The attacker places himself in the communication channel between the two components. Whenever one component attempts to communicate with the other (data flow, authentication challenges, etc.), the data first goes to the attacker, who has the opportunity to observe or alter it, and it is then passed on to the other component as if it was never intercepted. This interposition is transparent leaving the two compromised components unaware of the potential corruption or leakage of their communications. The potential for Man-in-the-Middle attacks yields an implicit lack of trust in communication or identify between two components.

Nessus

NASL familyDebian Local Security Checks
NASL idDEBIAN_DSA-2067.NASL
descriptionSeveral vulnerabilities were discovered in mahara, an electronic portfolio, weblog, and resume builder. The following Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project ids identify them : - CVE-2010-1667 Multiple pages performed insufficient input sanitising, making them vulnerable to cross-site scripting attacks. - CVE-2010-1668 Multiple forms lacked protection against cross-site request forgery attacks, therefore making them vulnerable. - CVE-2010-1670 Gregor Anzelj discovered that it was possible to accidentally configure an installation of mahara that allows access to another user
last seen2020-06-01
modified2020-06-02
plugin id47589
published2010-07-05
reporterThis script is Copyright (C) 2010-2019 and is owned by Tenable, Inc. or an Affiliate thereof.
sourcehttps://www.tenable.com/plugins/nessus/47589
titleDebian DSA-2067-1 : mahara - several vulnerabilities
code
#%NASL_MIN_LEVEL 80502
#
# (C) Tenable Network Security, Inc.
#
# The descriptive text and package checks in this plugin were  
# extracted from Debian Security Advisory DSA-2067. The text 
# itself is copyright (C) Software in the Public Interest, Inc.
#

include("compat.inc");

if (description)
{
  script_id(47589);
  script_version("1.11");
  script_cvs_date("Date: 2019/08/02 13:32:22");

  script_cve_id("CVE-2010-1667", "CVE-2010-1668", "CVE-2010-1670", "CVE-2010-2479");
  script_bugtraq_id(41259);
  script_xref(name:"DSA", value:"2067");

  script_name(english:"Debian DSA-2067-1 : mahara - several vulnerabilities");
  script_summary(english:"Checks dpkg output for the updated package");

  script_set_attribute(
    attribute:"synopsis", 
    value:"The remote Debian host is missing a security-related update."
  );
  script_set_attribute(
    attribute:"description", 
    value:
"Several vulnerabilities were discovered in mahara, an electronic
portfolio, weblog, and resume builder. The following Common
Vulnerabilities and Exposures project ids identify them :

  - CVE-2010-1667
    Multiple pages performed insufficient input sanitising,
    making them vulnerable to cross-site scripting attacks.

  - CVE-2010-1668
    Multiple forms lacked protection against cross-site
    request forgery attacks, therefore making them
    vulnerable.

  - CVE-2010-1670
    Gregor Anzelj discovered that it was possible to
    accidentally configure an installation of mahara that
    allows access to another user's account without a
    password.

  - CVE-2010-2479
    Certain Internet Explorer-specific cross-site scripting
    vulnerabilities were discovered in HTML Purifier, of
    which a copy is included in the mahara package."
  );
  script_set_attribute(
    attribute:"see_also",
    value:"https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2010-1667"
  );
  script_set_attribute(
    attribute:"see_also",
    value:"https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2010-1668"
  );
  script_set_attribute(
    attribute:"see_also",
    value:"https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2010-1670"
  );
  script_set_attribute(
    attribute:"see_also",
    value:"https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2010-2479"
  );
  script_set_attribute(
    attribute:"see_also",
    value:"https://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2067"
  );
  script_set_attribute(
    attribute:"solution", 
    value:
"Upgrade the mahara packages.

For the stable distribution (lenny), the problems have been fixed in
version 1.0.4-4+lenny6."
  );
  script_set_cvss_base_vector("CVSS2#AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P");
  script_set_cvss_temporal_vector("CVSS2#E:U/RL:OF/RC:C");
  script_set_attribute(attribute:"exploitability_ease", value:"No known exploits are available");
  script_set_attribute(attribute:"exploit_available", value:"false");

  script_set_attribute(attribute:"plugin_type", value:"local");
  script_set_attribute(attribute:"cpe", value:"p-cpe:/a:debian:debian_linux:mahara");
  script_set_attribute(attribute:"cpe", value:"cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:5.0");

  script_set_attribute(attribute:"patch_publication_date", value:"2010/07/02");
  script_set_attribute(attribute:"plugin_publication_date", value:"2010/07/05");
  script_end_attributes();

  script_category(ACT_GATHER_INFO);
  script_copyright(english:"This script is Copyright (C) 2010-2019 and is owned by Tenable, Inc. or an Affiliate thereof.");
  script_family(english:"Debian Local Security Checks");

  script_dependencies("ssh_get_info.nasl");
  script_require_keys("Host/local_checks_enabled", "Host/Debian/release", "Host/Debian/dpkg-l");

  exit(0);
}


include("audit.inc");
include("debian_package.inc");


if (!get_kb_item("Host/local_checks_enabled")) audit(AUDIT_LOCAL_CHECKS_NOT_ENABLED);
if (!get_kb_item("Host/Debian/release")) audit(AUDIT_OS_NOT, "Debian");
if (!get_kb_item("Host/Debian/dpkg-l")) audit(AUDIT_PACKAGE_LIST_MISSING);


flag = 0;
if (deb_check(release:"5.0", prefix:"mahara", reference:"1.0.4-4+lenny6")) flag++;
if (deb_check(release:"5.0", prefix:"mahara-apache2", reference:"1.0.4-4+lenny6")) flag++;

if (flag)
{
  if (report_verbosity > 0) security_hole(port:0, extra:deb_report_get());
  else security_hole(0);
  exit(0);
}
else audit(AUDIT_HOST_NOT, "affected");