CVE-2011-0551 in Endpoint Protection
Summary
by MITRE
Cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the Web Interface in the Endpoint Protection Manager in Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP) 11.0.600x through 11.0.6300 allows remote attackers to hijack the authentication of administrators for requests that create administrative accounts.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 03/30/2017
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2011-0551 represents a critical cross-site request forgery flaw within Symantec Endpoint Protection's management interface. This weakness exists in the Endpoint Protection Manager component of SEP versions ranging from 11.0.600x through 11.0.6300, creating a significant security risk for enterprise environments that rely on this protection platform. The flaw specifically targets the web-based administrative interface, which serves as the primary management console for security policies and user configurations. Attackers exploiting this vulnerability can manipulate authenticated sessions to execute unauthorized administrative actions without proper authentication credentials.
The technical implementation of this CSRF vulnerability stems from the absence of proper anti-CSRF token validation mechanisms within the administrative web interface. When administrators perform actions such as creating new administrative accounts, the system fails to verify that the requests originate from legitimate administrative sessions rather than maliciously crafted cross-site requests. This design flaw allows remote attackers to craft specially crafted web pages or malicious links that, when visited by authenticated administrators, automatically submit requests to the SEP management interface. The vulnerability specifically affects administrative account creation functionality, which represents a particularly dangerous attack vector given the elevated privileges associated with administrative accounts.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple privilege escalation to encompass complete administrative control over the Endpoint Protection Manager. An attacker who successfully exploits this CSRF vulnerability can create new administrative accounts with full privileges, effectively gaining persistent access to the security management infrastructure. This compromise allows adversaries to modify security policies, disable protection mechanisms, create backdoors, and potentially escalate their access to other systems within the network. The vulnerability's remote exploitability means that attackers do not require physical access to the network or direct system compromise to achieve administrative control, making it particularly dangerous for enterprise environments where administrators may access the management interface from various locations.
Organizations affected by this vulnerability should immediately implement mitigations including applying the vendor-provided security patches and updates released to address the CSRF implementation flaw. Network segmentation and privileged access controls should be strengthened to limit the potential impact of any successful exploitation attempts. The implementation of additional authentication mechanisms such as multi-factor authentication for administrative access can provide defense-in-depth protection. Security monitoring should be enhanced to detect unusual administrative account creation patterns and suspicious administrative activities that may indicate exploitation attempts. From a compliance perspective, this vulnerability aligns with CWE-352, which specifically addresses cross-site request forgery weaknesses in web applications, and represents a critical threat under ATT&CK technique T1078.004 for valid accounts and T1566 for credential harvesting through social engineering or malicious web content. Organizations should also consider implementing web application firewalls to detect and block malicious CSRF requests targeting the affected management interface components.