CVE-2015-4619 in Spina
Summary
by MITRE
Cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in Spina before commit bfe44f289e336f80b6593032679300c493735e75.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 12/28/2022
The CVE-2015-4619 vulnerability represents a critical cross-site request forgery flaw discovered in the Spina content management system prior to commit bfe44f289e336f80b6593032679300c493735e75. This vulnerability resides in the web application's insufficient protection mechanisms against unauthorized commands executed on behalf of authenticated users. The flaw allows attackers to trick authenticated users into performing actions they did not intend to execute, leveraging the trust relationship between the user's browser and the vulnerable application.
The technical implementation of this CSRF vulnerability stems from the absence of proper validation mechanisms for requests originating from external domains. In Spina's case, the application failed to implement anti-CSRF tokens or other protective measures that would verify the authenticity of requests. When a user authenticated to the Spina system, their browser would maintain session cookies that were automatically included with every request. Attackers could craft malicious web pages or emails containing embedded requests that would execute with the user's privileges without their knowledge. This vulnerability operates at the application layer and specifically targets the authentication and session management components of the CMS.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple data theft or modification. An attacker who successfully exploits this CSRF flaw could perform administrative actions such as creating new user accounts, modifying existing content, deleting database entries, or even uploading malicious files to the server. The vulnerability affects all authenticated users within the Spina system, making it particularly dangerous in environments where multiple administrators or editors have access. Organizations using Spina before the mentioned commit were vulnerable to attacks that could result in complete compromise of their content management infrastructure, potentially leading to data breaches, service disruption, and reputational damage.
Security professionals should consider this vulnerability in the context of CWE-352, which specifically addresses Cross-Site Request Forgery weaknesses in software systems. The ATT&CK framework categorizes this type of vulnerability under the T1078 technique for Valid Accounts, as attackers can leverage legitimate user credentials to execute malicious commands. Mitigation strategies include implementing proper CSRF token generation and validation mechanisms, ensuring that all state-changing operations require verification tokens, and configuring the application to validate the referer header. Organizations should also implement Content Security Policy headers to restrict the sources from which requests can originate, and conduct regular security audits to identify similar vulnerabilities in their web applications. The fix for this specific vulnerability required the implementation of CSRF protection measures that would validate the origin of requests and ensure that only legitimate requests from the application's own domain would be processed.