CVE-2009-4405 in Trac
Summary
by MITRE
Multiple unspecified vulnerabilities in Trac before 0.11.6 have unknown impact and attack vectors, possibly related to (1) "policy checks in report results when using alternate formats" or (2) a "check for the raw role that is missing in docutils < 0.6."
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 04/13/2025
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2009-4405 affects Trac versions prior to 0.11.6 and represents a collection of unspecified security flaws that could potentially compromise system integrity and user access controls. This vulnerability classification indicates that the security issues were not fully disclosed or documented at the time of reporting, making them particularly concerning as they may have allowed for privilege escalation or unauthorized access to sensitive information. The affected Trac versions represent a critical security gap in the popular open-source project management and bug tracking system that was widely deployed across development teams and organizations relying on its collaboration features.
The technical nature of these vulnerabilities appears to be rooted in two primary areas of the Trac codebase that handle access control and document processing. The first area involves policy checks within report results when utilizing alternate data formats, suggesting that access controls may have been bypassed or inadequately enforced when users generated reports in formats other than the default. This could potentially allow unauthorized users to access restricted information or perform actions they should not be permitted to execute. The second vulnerability concerns a missing check for the raw role in docutils version 0.6 and earlier, where the absence of proper validation in document processing components could enable malicious input to be processed with elevated privileges or in ways that circumvent normal security boundaries.
The operational impact of these vulnerabilities could be significant for organizations relying on Trac for project management and bug tracking. If exploited, the policy check bypass in report generation could allow users to extract sensitive project information, access restricted tickets, or view confidential development data that should only be visible to authorized personnel. The docutils vulnerability could potentially enable privilege escalation attacks or arbitrary code execution through specially crafted documentation or comment inputs. These issues would particularly affect organizations using Trac for managing sensitive development projects or those with strict access control requirements, as they could undermine the security model that Trac implements for user roles and permissions.
Organizations should immediately upgrade to Trac version 0.11.6 or later to address these vulnerabilities, as the unspecified nature of the flaws makes them particularly dangerous to leave unpatched. The upgrade process should include thorough testing of existing workflows and customizations to ensure compatibility with the patched version. System administrators should also conduct comprehensive security audits of their Trac installations to identify any potential exploitation attempts or unauthorized access patterns that may have occurred before the patch was applied. Additionally, implementing network segmentation and access controls around Trac installations can provide additional defense-in-depth measures while the upgrade is being implemented. These vulnerabilities align with common attack patterns found in software security frameworks, particularly those related to access control bypass and privilege escalation, which are categorized under CWE-284 for improper access control and CWE-20 for improper input validation. The attack vectors for these vulnerabilities would likely involve crafting specific report requests or documentation inputs that exploit the missing policy checks or validation mechanisms, potentially allowing attackers to escalate privileges or access unauthorized data through the Trac interface or API endpoints.