Vulnerabilities > CVE-2011-1403 - Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in Mahara

047910
CVSS 0.0 - NONE
Attack vector
UNKNOWN
Attack complexity
UNKNOWN
Privileges required
UNKNOWN
Confidentiality impact
UNKNOWN
Integrity impact
UNKNOWN
Availability impact
UNKNOWN

Summary

Cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the pieforms implementation in Mahara before 1.3.6 allows remote attackers to hijack the authentication of arbitrary users for requests to any form, related to inappropriate regeneration of session keys.

Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE)

Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC)

  • JSON Hijacking (aka JavaScript Hijacking)
    An attacker targets a system that uses JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) as a transport mechanism between the client and the server (common in Web 2.0 systems using AJAX) to steal possibly confidential information transmitted from the server back to the client inside the JSON object by taking advantage of the loophole in the browser's Same Origin Policy that does not prohibit JavaScript from one website to be included and executed in the context of another website. An attacker gets the victim to visit his or her malicious page that contains a script tag whose source points to the vulnerable system with a URL that requests a response from the server containing a JSON object with possibly confidential information. The malicious page also contains malicious code to capture the JSON object returned by the server before any other processing on it can take place, typically by overriding the JavaScript function used to create new objects. This hook allows the malicious code to get access to the creation of each object and transmit the possibly sensitive contents of the captured JSON object to the attackers' server. There is nothing in the browser's security model to prevent the attackers' malicious JavaScript code (originating from attacker's domain) to set up an environment (as described above) to intercept a JSON object response (coming from the vulnerable target system's domain), read its contents and transmit to the attackers' controlled site. The same origin policy protects the domain object model (DOM), but not the JSON.
  • Cross-Domain Search Timing
    An attacker initiates cross domain HTTP / GET requests and times the server responses. The timing of these responses may leak important information on what is happening on the server. Browser's same origin policy prevents the attacker from directly reading the server responses (in the absence of any other weaknesses), but does not prevent the attacker from timing the responses to requests that the attacker issued cross domain. For GET requests an attacker could for instance leverage the "img" tag in conjunction with "onload() / onerror()" javascript events. For the POST requests, an attacker could leverage the "iframe" element and leverage the "onload()" event. There is nothing in the current browser security model that prevents an attacker to use these methods to time responses to the attackers' cross domain requests. The timing for these responses leaks information. For instance, if a victim has an active session with their online e-mail account, an attacker could issue search requests in the victim's mailbox. While the attacker is not able to view the responses, based on the timings of the responses, the attacker could ask yes / no questions as to the content of victim's e-mails, who the victim e-mailed, when, etc. This is but one example; There are other scenarios where an attacker could infer potentially sensitive information from cross domain requests by timing the responses while asking the right questions that leak information.
  • Cross Site Identification
    An attacker harvests identifying information about a victim via an active session that the victim's browser has with a social networking site. A victim may have the social networking site open in one tab or perhaps is simply using the "remember me" feature to keep his or her session with the social networking site active. An attacker induces a payload to execute in the victim's browser that transparently to the victim initiates a request to the social networking site (e.g., via available social network site APIs) to retrieve identifying information about a victim. While some of this information may be public, the attacker is able to harvest this information in context and may use it for further attacks on the user (e.g., spear phishing). In one example of an attack, an attacker may post a malicious posting that contains an image with an embedded link. The link actually requests identifying information from the social networking site. A victim who views the malicious posting in his or her browser will have sent identifying information to the attacker, as long as the victim had an active session with the social networking site. There are many other ways in which the attacker may get the payload to execute in the victim's browser mainly by finding a way to hide it in some reputable site that the victim visits. The attacker could also send the link to the victim in an e-mail and trick the victim into clicking on the link. This attack is basically a cross site request forgery attack with two main differences. First, there is no action that is performed on behalf of the user aside from harvesting information. So standard CSRF protection may not work in this situation. Second, what is important in this attack pattern is the nature of the data being harvested, which is identifying information that can be obtained and used in context. This real time harvesting of identifying information can be used as a prelude for launching real time targeted social engineering attacks on the victim.
  • Cross Site Request Forgery (aka Session Riding)
    An attacker crafts malicious web links and distributes them (via web pages, email, etc.), typically in a targeted manner, hoping to induce users to click on the link and execute the malicious action against some third-party application. If successful, the action embedded in the malicious link will be processed and accepted by the targeted application with the users' privilege level. This type of attack leverages the persistence and implicit trust placed in user session cookies by many web applications today. In such an architecture, once the user authenticates to an application and a session cookie is created on the user's system, all following transactions for that session are authenticated using that cookie including potential actions initiated by an attacker and simply "riding" the existing session cookie.

Nessus

NASL familyDebian Local Security Checks
NASL idDEBIAN_DSA-2246.NASL
descriptionSeveral vulnerabilities were discovered in Mahara, an electronic portfolio, weblog, and resume builder. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project identifies the following problems : - CVE-2011-1402 It was discovered that previous versions of Mahara did not check user credentials before adding a secret URL to a view or suspending a user. - CVE-2011-1403 Due to a misconfiguration of the Pieform package in Mahara, the cross-site request forgery protection mechanism that Mahara relies on to harden its form was not working and was essentially disabled. This is a critical vulnerability which could allow attackers to trick other users (for example administrators) into performing malicious actions on behalf of the attacker. Most Mahara forms are vulnerable. - CVE-2011-1404 Many of the JSON structures returned by Mahara for its AJAX interactions included more information than what ought to be disclosed to the logged in user. New versions of Mahara limit this information to what is necessary for each page. - CVE-2011-1405 Previous versions of Mahara did not escape the contents of HTML emails sent to users. Depending on the filters enabled in one
last seen2020-03-17
modified2011-06-10
plugin id55034
published2011-06-10
reporterThis script is Copyright (C) 2011-2020 and is owned by Tenable, Inc. or an Affiliate thereof.
sourcehttps://www.tenable.com/plugins/nessus/55034
titleDebian DSA-2246-1 : 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-2246. The text 
# itself is copyright (C) Software in the Public Interest, Inc.
#

include("compat.inc");

if (description)
{
  script_id(55034);
  script_version("1.12");
  script_set_attribute(attribute:"plugin_modification_date", value:"2020/03/12");

  script_cve_id("CVE-2011-1402", "CVE-2011-1403", "CVE-2011-1404", "CVE-2011-1405", "CVE-2011-1406");
  script_bugtraq_id(47798);
  script_xref(name:"DSA", value:"2246");

  script_name(english:"Debian DSA-2246-1 : 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 Common Vulnerabilities and
Exposures project identifies the following problems :

  - CVE-2011-1402
    It was discovered that previous versions of Mahara did
    not check user credentials before adding a secret URL to
    a view or suspending a user.

  - CVE-2011-1403
    Due to a misconfiguration of the Pieform package in
    Mahara, the cross-site request forgery protection
    mechanism that Mahara relies on to harden its form was
    not working and was essentially disabled. This is a
    critical vulnerability which could allow attackers to
    trick other users (for example administrators) into
    performing malicious actions on behalf of the attacker.
    Most Mahara forms are vulnerable.

  - CVE-2011-1404
    Many of the JSON structures returned by Mahara for its
    AJAX interactions included more information than what
    ought to be disclosed to the logged in user. New
    versions of Mahara limit this information to what is
    necessary for each page.

  - CVE-2011-1405
    Previous versions of Mahara did not escape the contents
    of HTML emails sent to users. Depending on the filters
    enabled in one's mail reader, it could lead to
    cross-site scripting attacks.

  - CVE-2011-1406
    It has been pointed out to us that if Mahara is
    configured (through its wwwroot variable) to use HTTPS,
    it will happily let users login via the HTTP version of
    the site if the web server is configured to serve
    content over both protocol. The new version of Mahara
    will, when the wwwroot points to an HTTPS URL,
    automatically redirect to HTTPS if it detects that it is
    being run over HTTP.

  We recommend that sites wanting to run Mahara over HTTPS make sure
  that their web server configuration does not allow the serving of
  content over HTTP and merely redirects to the secure version. We
  also suggest that site administrators consider adding the HSTS
  headers to their web server configuration."
  );
  script_set_attribute(
    attribute:"see_also",
    value:"https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2011-1402"
  );
  script_set_attribute(
    attribute:"see_also",
    value:"https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2011-1403"
  );
  script_set_attribute(
    attribute:"see_also",
    value:"https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2011-1404"
  );
  script_set_attribute(
    attribute:"see_also",
    value:"https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2011-1405"
  );
  script_set_attribute(
    attribute:"see_also",
    value:"https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2011-1406"
  );
  # http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Strict_Transport_Security
  script_set_attribute(
    attribute:"see_also",
    value:"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Strict_Transport_Security"
  );
  script_set_attribute(
    attribute:"see_also",
    value:"https://packages.debian.org/source/squeeze/mahara"
  );
  script_set_attribute(
    attribute:"see_also",
    value:"https://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2246"
  );
  script_set_attribute(
    attribute:"solution", 
    value:
"Upgrade the mahara packages.

For the oldstable distribution (lenny), these problems have been fixed
in version 1.0.4-4+lenny10.

For the stable distribution (squeeze), these problems have been fixed
in version 1.2.6-2+squeeze2."
  );
  script_set_cvss_base_vector("CVSS2#AV:N/AC:M/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:"cpe", value:"cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:6.0");

  script_set_attribute(attribute:"patch_publication_date", value:"2011/05/29");
  script_set_attribute(attribute:"plugin_publication_date", value:"2011/06/10");
  script_end_attributes();

  script_category(ACT_GATHER_INFO);
  script_copyright(english:"This script is Copyright (C) 2011-2020 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+lenny10")) flag++;
if (deb_check(release:"6.0", prefix:"mahara", reference:"1.2.6-2+squeeze2")) flag++;
if (deb_check(release:"6.0", prefix:"mahara-apache2", reference:"1.2.6-2+squeeze2")) flag++;
if (deb_check(release:"6.0", prefix:"mahara-mediaplayer", reference:"1.2.6-2+squeeze2")) flag++;

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