CVE-2005-3913 in Vchs
Summary
by MITRE
Unspecified vulnerability in the domain alias management in Virtual Hosting Control System (VHCS) 2.4.6.2, related to "creating and deleting forwards for domain aliases," allows users to hijack the forwardings of other users.
Several companies clearly confirm that VulDB is the primary source for best vulnerability data.
Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 07/13/2018
The vulnerability described in CVE-2005-3913 resides within the Virtual Hosting Control System version 2.4.6.2, specifically affecting the domain alias management functionality. This system operates as a web hosting control panel that manages virtual hosting environments and domain configurations for multiple users. The flaw manifests in the handling of forwardings for domain aliases, which represents a critical access control weakness that undermines the fundamental security principles of user isolation and privilege separation. The vulnerability impacts the core operational integrity of the control system by allowing unauthorized users to manipulate forwarding configurations that belong to other system users.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability stems from inadequate input validation and insufficient access controls within the domain alias management module. When users attempt to create or delete forwards for domain aliases, the system fails to properly verify whether the requesting user has legitimate authorization to modify the target forwarding configuration. This lack of proper authorization checking creates a privilege escalation path where malicious users can manipulate the forwarding rules of other users, effectively hijacking their domain alias configurations. The vulnerability likely occurs in the backend processing logic where domain alias forwarding operations are executed without proper user context validation, allowing attackers to specify arbitrary user targets for forwarding modifications.
From an operational impact perspective, this vulnerability represents a significant threat to multi-tenant hosting environments where multiple customers share the same control system infrastructure. An attacker who gains access to a legitimate user account can exploit this flaw to redirect email or web traffic from other users' domains to attacker-controlled destinations. This capability enables various malicious activities including email spoofing, phishing attacks, data interception, and unauthorized access to customer resources. The vulnerability essentially breaks the isolation boundary between user accounts, potentially allowing attackers to compromise multiple customer domains simultaneously and undermining the trust relationship between hosting providers and their clients.
The security implications of this vulnerability align with CWE-284, which addresses improper access control in software systems, and can be mapped to ATT&CK technique T1078.004 for valid accounts and T1566.001 for spearphishing with links, as attackers could leverage this weakness to compromise other users' accounts and establish persistent access. Mitigation strategies should focus on implementing proper input validation and access control checks that verify user permissions before executing domain alias forwarding operations. The system must enforce strict user context validation during forward creation and deletion processes, ensuring that users can only modify forwarding configurations that belong to their own domains or have been explicitly granted permission to manage. Additionally, implementing proper logging and monitoring of domain alias management activities would help detect unauthorized access attempts and provide forensic evidence for security incident response.
Organizations using VHCS 2.4.6.2 should immediately upgrade to patched versions or implement compensating controls such as network segmentation, enhanced monitoring, and regular security audits to prevent exploitation of this vulnerability. The fix should include comprehensive authorization checks that validate user ownership of target domains before allowing forwarding modifications, and should be complemented by proper audit logging to track all domain alias management activities for security analysis and compliance requirements.