CVE-2008-3744 in Drupal
Summary
by MITRE
Multiple cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerabilities in Drupal 5.x before 5.10 and 6.x before 6.4 allow remote attackers to hijack the authentication of administrators for requests that (1) add or (2) delete user access rules.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 08/16/2019
The vulnerability described in CVE-2008-3744 represents a critical cross-site request forgery weakness affecting Drupal content management systems across multiple versions. This flaw resides in the core authentication and authorization mechanisms of Drupal 5.x prior to version 5.10 and Drupal 6.x prior to version 6.4, creating a significant security risk for web applications relying on these platforms. The vulnerability specifically targets administrative functions within the user access control system, allowing malicious actors to exploit the lack of proper request validation mechanisms.
The technical implementation of this CSRF vulnerability stems from insufficient validation of HTTP requests originating from administrative interfaces. When administrators perform actions such as adding or deleting user access rules, the system fails to properly verify the authenticity of the request source. This absence of anti-CSRF token validation means that attackers can craft malicious web pages or send specially crafted requests that, when executed by an authenticated administrator, will be processed as legitimate administrative commands. The vulnerability operates at the application layer and specifically targets the user privilege management functionality within Drupal's security framework.
The operational impact of this vulnerability is severe as it provides attackers with the ability to completely compromise administrative accounts and gain unauthorized control over user access permissions. An attacker who successfully exploits this vulnerability could add new administrative users, modify existing user privileges, or delete critical access rules, effectively undermining the entire security model of the web application. This type of attack can lead to complete system compromise, data theft, service disruption, and unauthorized modification of web content. The vulnerability particularly affects organizations that rely on Drupal for their web presence, as it allows attackers to maintain persistent access and escalate privileges within the system.
Organizations should implement immediate mitigations including upgrading to the patched versions of Drupal 5.10 and 6.4, which contain proper CSRF token validation mechanisms. Additionally, administrators should implement additional security controls such as web application firewalls, monitoring for suspicious administrative activities, and regular security audits of access control configurations. The vulnerability aligns with CWE-352, which specifically addresses Cross-Site Request Forgery weaknesses, and represents a significant risk under the ATT&CK framework's privilege escalation techniques. Organizations should also consider implementing multi-factor authentication and least privilege access controls to reduce the potential impact of such vulnerabilities. Regular security assessments and vulnerability scanning should be conducted to identify similar weaknesses in other applications and systems within the organization's infrastructure.