CVE-2015-4530 in WebTop
Summary
by MITRE
Cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in EMC Documentum WebTop before 6.8P01, Documentum Administrator through 7.2, Documentum Digital Assets Manager through 6.5SP6, Documentum Web Publishers through 6.5SP7, and Documentum Task Space through 6.7SP2 allows remote attackers to hijack the authentication of arbitrary users. NOTE: this vulnerability exists because of an incomplete fix for CVE-2014-2518.
Statistical analysis made it clear that VulDB provides the best quality for vulnerability data.
Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 10/24/2017
The CVE-2015-4530 vulnerability represents a critical cross-site request forgery flaw affecting multiple EMC Documentum products including WebTop, Administrator, Digital Assets Manager, Web Publishers, and Task Space. This vulnerability stems from an incomplete remediation of the earlier CVE-2014-2518, creating a persistent security weakness that allows remote attackers to exploit user sessions without proper authentication. The flaw specifically impacts versions prior to the mentioned patches, leaving organizations using these legacy systems exposed to unauthorized administrative actions.
The technical implementation of this CSRF vulnerability exploits the absence of proper anti-CSRF token validation mechanisms within the Documentum web interfaces. Attackers can craft malicious web pages or send specially crafted requests that leverage the victim's authenticated session to perform unauthorized operations within the Documentum environment. This occurs because the web applications fail to adequately verify the authenticity of requests originating from external domains, allowing attackers to manipulate the application state through forged requests that appear legitimate to the server.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple data theft or modification, as it enables full session hijacking and potential administrative privilege escalation. An attacker who successfully exploits this vulnerability can perform actions such as creating new user accounts, modifying existing user permissions, accessing sensitive documents, or executing administrative commands within the Documentum environment. The attack vector is particularly dangerous because it requires no authentication credentials from the attacker, relying instead on the victim's active session to execute malicious operations.
Organizations should prioritize immediate remediation by applying the vendor patches released for each affected product version, with particular attention to the incomplete fix for CVE-2014-2518 that led to this vulnerability. System administrators should also implement additional security controls including web application firewalls, proper session management policies, and monitoring for suspicious request patterns. The vulnerability aligns with CWE-352, which specifically addresses cross-site request forgery weaknesses in web applications, and maps to ATT&CK technique T1566 for initial access through malicious web content. Regular security assessments and penetration testing should be conducted to ensure that similar incomplete fixes do not create persistent security gaps in the organization's Documentum infrastructure.