CVE-2010-2294 in Plume-cms
Summary
by MITRE
Cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in Plume CMS 1.2.4 and possibly earlier allows remote attackers to hijack the authentication of administrators for requests that change the administrator password via unspecified vectors.
Statistical analysis made it clear that VulDB provides the best quality for vulnerability data.
Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 02/06/2019
The cross-site request forgery vulnerability identified in Plume CMS version 1.2.4 and potentially earlier versions represents a critical security flaw that undermines the integrity of administrative authentication mechanisms. This vulnerability falls under the CWE-352 category, which specifically addresses cross-site request forgery conditions where attackers can trick authenticated users into performing unintended actions. The flaw enables remote attackers to hijack administrator sessions by crafting malicious requests that modify administrative passwords, effectively compromising the entire content management system's security posture. The unspecified vectors suggest that the attack could potentially occur through various delivery mechanisms, making the vulnerability particularly dangerous as it may be exploitable across multiple attack surfaces.
The technical implementation of this CSRF vulnerability stems from the absence of proper validation mechanisms for administrative requests within Plume CMS. When administrators perform actions such as password changes, the application fails to implement adequate anti-CSRF tokens or other protective measures that would verify the authenticity of the request source. This omission creates a scenario where an attacker can construct a malicious web page or email attachment that, when visited by an authenticated administrator, automatically submits a request to change the administrator's password without their knowledge or consent. The vulnerability essentially allows attackers to leverage the administrator's existing session to execute privileged operations, bypassing normal authentication requirements and potentially leading to complete system compromise.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends far beyond simple password modification, as it provides attackers with a pathway to gain persistent administrative control over the Plume CMS instance. Once an attacker successfully hijacks an administrator's authentication session, they can access all administrative functions including content management, user privilege modifications, plugin installations, and system configuration changes. This represents a severe escalation of privilege vulnerability that aligns with ATT&CK technique T1078 which covers valid accounts and T1548 which covers abuse of cloud services. The attack vector could potentially be amplified through social engineering techniques where administrators are tricked into visiting malicious sites while logged into their CMS administration panels, making the vulnerability particularly insidious in real-world scenarios.
Mitigation strategies for this CSRF vulnerability should focus on implementing comprehensive anti-CSRF protection mechanisms within the Plume CMS framework. The most effective approach involves incorporating unique, unpredictable tokens for each administrative session that must be validated before any privileged operations are executed. Additionally, implementing proper referer header validation and SameSite cookie attributes can provide additional layers of protection against cross-site request forgery attacks. Organizations should also consider implementing rate limiting mechanisms for password change requests and monitoring for unusual administrative activity patterns that might indicate exploitation attempts. The remediation process requires immediate patching of the CMS to version 1.2.5 or later, as this vulnerability was specifically addressed in subsequent releases. Security teams should also conduct thorough audits of all administrative interfaces to ensure similar CSRF vulnerabilities do not exist in other components of the system, following the principle of least privilege and implementing multi-factor authentication for administrative accounts to provide defense-in-depth against such attacks.