CVE-2008-0575 in webSPELL
Summary
by MITRE
Cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in admin/admincenter.php in webSPELL 4.01.02 allows remote attackers to assign the superadmin privilege level to arbitrary accounts as administrators via an "update member" action.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 09/16/2018
The CVE-2008-0575 vulnerability represents a critical cross-site request forgery flaw in the webSPELL 4.01.02 content management system that fundamentally undermines the application's administrative privilege management. This vulnerability exists within the admincenter.php file and specifically targets the "update member" functionality that administrators use to modify user accounts. The flaw enables remote attackers to manipulate the privilege assignment process without proper authentication or authorization, allowing them to elevate arbitrary user accounts to the superadmin level. This represents a severe escalation of privileges that directly compromises the entire administrative structure of the webSPELL installation.
The technical implementation of this CSRF vulnerability stems from the absence of proper anti-CSRF token validation within the administrative update member action. When administrators perform member updates through the webSPELL admin interface, the application fails to verify that the request originates from a legitimate administrative session rather than a maliciously crafted request. Attackers can exploit this by crafting specially designed web pages or email attachments that, when visited by an authenticated administrator, automatically submit forged requests to the admincenter.php endpoint. These requests bypass normal authentication mechanisms and directly manipulate the privilege levels assigned to user accounts, effectively granting attacker-controlled accounts elevated administrative rights.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends far beyond simple privilege escalation, creating a comprehensive compromise of the webSPELL installation's security posture. Once an attacker successfully elevates a user to superadmin status, they gain complete control over the entire system including access to sensitive user data, the ability to modify or delete content, administrative configuration changes, and potential access to backend databases. This vulnerability is particularly dangerous because it requires no direct access to the system's administrative credentials, instead exploiting the trust relationship between the web application and its authenticated administrators. The attack vector is easily executable through social engineering techniques, making it highly exploitable in real-world scenarios where administrators might unknowingly trigger malicious requests.
Security professionals should consider this vulnerability in the context of CWE-352, which specifically addresses cross-site request forgery weaknesses in web applications. The flaw directly maps to the category of insufficient anti-CSRF protection mechanisms, where the application fails to validate the authenticity of requests originating from authenticated sessions. From an ATT&CK framework perspective, this vulnerability aligns with techniques in the privilege escalation and persistence domains, as it allows adversaries to establish long-term administrative access without detection. Organizations should implement immediate mitigations including the addition of unique anti-CSRF tokens for each administrative session, proper validation of request origins, and implementation of the same-site cookie attributes. Additionally, regular security audits should verify that all administrative functions properly validate user authentication and authorization contexts to prevent similar vulnerabilities in other components of the web application stack.