CVE-2008-5400 in mvnForum
Summary
by MITRE
Multiple cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerabilities in mvnForum before 1.2.1 GA allow remote attackers to (1) create forums, (2) change account privileges, (3) enable accounts, or (4) disable accounts as a product administrator via unspecified vectors, possibly related to HTTP Referer headers.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 10/21/2018
The CVE-2008-5400 vulnerability represents a critical cross-site request forgery flaw affecting mvnForum versions prior to 1.2.1 GA, demonstrating a fundamental weakness in web application security controls that enables unauthorized administrative actions through maliciously crafted requests. This vulnerability operates at the application layer and specifically targets the authentication and authorization mechanisms within the forum software, creating a dangerous attack surface where remote adversaries can manipulate administrative functions without proper credentials. The flaw stems from insufficient validation of request origins and lack of proper anti-CSRF token implementation, allowing attackers to forge legitimate administrative requests that appear to originate from authenticated administrators.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability exploits the absence of robust CSRF protection mechanisms within the mvnForum application's request processing pipeline. Attackers can leverage the flawed validation of HTTP Referer headers or other request attributes to craft malicious requests that bypass normal authentication checks, enabling them to perform four distinct administrative operations including forum creation, account privilege modification, account enabling, and account disabling. This represents a classic CSRF attack pattern where the application fails to verify that requests originate from legitimate sources within the same session context, creating a pathway for privilege escalation and unauthorized modifications to the forum's configuration and user management systems.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple data manipulation to encompass complete administrative control over the affected forum platform, potentially allowing attackers to compromise the entire user base and forum functionality. The vulnerability's scope permits attackers to fundamentally alter the forum's operational parameters by creating new forums that could serve as attack vectors for further exploitation, modifying user privileges to elevate their own access levels, or disabling legitimate user accounts to disrupt service availability. This attack vector particularly threatens the integrity of the application's user management system and could lead to complete service compromise if attackers successfully leverage these capabilities to gain persistent access to the administrative interface.
Security professionals should note that this vulnerability aligns with CWE-352, which specifically addresses cross-site request forgery weaknesses in web applications, and demonstrates characteristics consistent with ATT&CK technique T1548.001 related to privilege escalation through abuse of administrative tools. Organizations should implement immediate mitigations including the deployment of anti-CSRF tokens for all administrative functions, proper validation of HTTP Referer headers, and implementation of strict origin validation mechanisms. The recommended remediation strategy involves upgrading to mvnForum 1.2.1 GA or later versions that incorporate proper CSRF protection measures, along with comprehensive security testing to identify and address similar vulnerabilities in other application components that may be susceptible to similar attack patterns.