CVE-2009-0056 in IronPort Encryption Appliance
Summary
by MITRE
Cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the administration interface in Cisco IronPort Encryption Appliance 6.2.4 before 6.2.4.1.1, 6.2.5, 6.2.6, 6.2.7 before 6.2.7.7, 6.3 before 6.3.0.4, and 6.5 before 6.5.0.2; and Cisco IronPort PostX 6.2.1 before 6.2.1.1 and 6.2.2 before 6.2.2.3; allows remote attackers to execute commands and modify appliance preferences as arbitrary users via a logout action.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 08/24/2019
The CVE-2009-0056 vulnerability represents a critical cross-site request forgery flaw affecting Cisco IronPort Encryption Appliance and PostX products, demonstrating a fundamental breakdown in web application security controls. This vulnerability specifically targets the administration interfaces of affected appliances, creating a dangerous attack vector that allows remote adversaries to manipulate system configurations without proper authentication. The flaw stems from inadequate validation of request origins and missing anti-CSRF tokens in critical administrative operations, particularly the logout functionality that serves as a gateway for unauthorized command execution.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability exploits the absence of proper CSRF protection mechanisms within the web-based management interfaces of these security appliances. When legitimate administrative users interact with the appliance's web interface, the system fails to verify that requests originate from authorized sources, instead accepting any request that appears to be a valid administrative operation. This weakness is particularly dangerous because it allows attackers to craft malicious web pages or email attachments that, when visited by authenticated administrators, automatically submit commands to the appliance. The logout action becomes a critical attack surface since it represents a legitimate administrative function that can be abused to escalate privileges or execute arbitrary commands within the appliance's operational context.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple privilege escalation to encompass complete system compromise and potential data exfiltration. Attackers can leverage this flaw to modify appliance preferences, execute arbitrary commands, and potentially gain unauthorized access to encrypted communications that these appliances are specifically designed to protect. The vulnerability affects multiple versions of Cisco IronPort products, indicating a widespread issue that could impact organizations relying on these appliances for email encryption and security services. Organizations using affected versions face significant risk of unauthorized configuration changes that could compromise their email security infrastructure and potentially expose sensitive communications to unauthorized parties.
Mitigation strategies for this vulnerability require immediate patching of affected appliances to the recommended versions that include proper CSRF protection mechanisms. Network administrators should implement additional monitoring of administrative interface access patterns and establish strict access controls for these interfaces. The remediation process must include comprehensive testing to ensure that patched appliances maintain proper functionality while implementing the necessary CSRF token validation. Organizations should also consider implementing network segmentation to limit direct access to administrative interfaces and deploy intrusion detection systems to monitor for suspicious administrative activity patterns that may indicate exploitation attempts. This vulnerability aligns with CWE-352, which specifically addresses cross-site request forgery weaknesses, and represents a classic example of how insufficient input validation and missing security controls in web applications can lead to critical system compromise. The ATT&CK framework categorizes this as a privilege escalation technique through web application vulnerabilities, emphasizing the need for comprehensive web application security controls including proper session management and request origin validation.