CVE-2014-1694 in OTRS
Summary
by MITRE
Multiple cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerabilities in (1) CustomerPreferences.pm, (2) CustomerTicketMessage.pm, (3) CustomerTicketProcess.pm, and (4) CustomerTicketZoom.pm in Kernel/Modules/ in Open Ticket Request System (OTRS) 3.1.x before 3.1.19, 3.2.x before 3.2.14, and 3.3.x before 3.3.4 allow remote attackers to hijack the authentication of arbitrary users for requests that (5) create tickets or (6) send follow-ups to existing tickets.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 02/01/2022
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2014-1694 represents a critical cross-site request forgery weakness affecting the Open Ticket Request System OTRS platform across multiple versions. This flaw exists within four core module files including CustomerPreferences.pm, CustomerTicketMessage.pm, CustomerTicketProcess.pm, and CustomerTicketZoom.pm within the Kernel/Modules directory structure. The vulnerability manifests as a CSRF attack vector that enables remote attackers to manipulate authenticated sessions and execute unauthorized actions against the system. These modules form the backbone of user interaction and ticket management functionality within the OTRS framework, making the impact particularly severe as they control fundamental administrative and operational capabilities.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability stems from the absence of proper CSRF protection mechanisms within the affected modules. When users navigate to malicious websites or receive crafted payloads, attackers can exploit the lack of anti-CSRF tokens or validation checks to forge requests that appear legitimate to the OTRS system. The vulnerability specifically targets authentication hijacking scenarios where attackers can leverage existing user sessions to perform unauthorized actions including creating new tickets and sending follow-up messages to existing tickets. This represents a direct violation of the principle of least privilege and demonstrates a failure in the application's session management and request validation protocols.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple data manipulation to encompass complete session compromise and unauthorized access to sensitive ticketing information. Attackers can create malicious tickets with arbitrary content, potentially including phishing attempts, spam messages, or malicious attachments that could compromise other users. The ability to send follow-ups to existing tickets allows for persistent exploitation where attackers can gradually infiltrate the system by adding malicious content to legitimate ticket threads. This vulnerability directly undermines the integrity and confidentiality of the ticketing system, potentially exposing sensitive customer information and compromising the overall security posture of organizations relying on OTRS for their customer support infrastructure.
Organizations utilizing affected versions of OTRS should immediately implement mitigation strategies including updating to patched versions 3.1.19, 3.2.14, and 3.3.4 respectively. The vulnerability aligns with CWE-352, which specifically addresses cross-site request forgery weaknesses in web applications, and corresponds to ATT&CK technique T1566.002 for credential access through social engineering. Additional protective measures should include implementing Content Security Policy headers, deploying web application firewalls, and conducting regular security assessments of the ticketing system. The vulnerability also highlights the importance of proper input validation and session management practices as outlined in OWASP Top Ten 2017 category A05: Security Misconfiguration, where inadequate protection against CSRF attacks can lead to complete system compromise.