CVE-2016-4881 in BaserCMS
Summary
by MITRE
Cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in baserCMS plugin Blog version 3.0.10 and earlier allows remote attackers to hijack the authentication of administrators via unspecified vectors.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 09/25/2020
The CVE-2016-4881 vulnerability represents a critical cross-site request forgery flaw discovered in the baserCMS plugin Blog version 3.0.10 and earlier implementations. This vulnerability resides within the web application's authentication mechanisms and specifically targets administrator accounts, creating a significant security risk for organizations utilizing this content management system. The flaw enables remote attackers to exploit the trust relationship between authenticated users and the web application, potentially allowing unauthorized administrative actions to be performed on behalf of legitimate administrators without their knowledge or consent.
The technical nature of this CSRF vulnerability stems from the absence of proper anti-CSRF protection mechanisms within the plugin's request processing logic. When administrators interact with the baserCMS interface, the application should validate that requests originate from legitimate sources and contain appropriate security tokens to prevent malicious actors from crafting forged requests that appear to come from authenticated users. The vulnerability exists because the plugin fails to implement robust CSRF protection measures such as unique tokens per session, referer validation, or origin checking mechanisms that would normally prevent unauthorized request execution.
From an operational impact perspective, this vulnerability creates a severe threat landscape for organizations using affected baserCMS installations. Attackers can exploit this flaw to perform administrative actions including but not limited to modifying content, adding or removing users, changing system configurations, and potentially escalating privileges within the application. The remote nature of the attack means that threat actors do not require physical access to the system or direct network connection to the server, making the vulnerability particularly dangerous as it can be exploited from anywhere on the internet. The unspecified vectors mentioned in the description suggest that multiple attack scenarios could potentially be exploited, making the vulnerability even more concerning from a security management standpoint.
Organizations should immediately implement mitigation strategies including upgrading to the patched version of the baserCMS plugin Blog or applying the relevant security patches provided by the vendor. The implementation of proper CSRF protection mechanisms should be enforced throughout the application, including the use of anti-CSRF tokens for all state-changing operations, validation of HTTP referer headers, and implementation of SameSite cookie attributes where applicable. This vulnerability aligns with CWE-352, which specifically addresses Cross-Site Request Forgery weaknesses, and corresponds to tactics in the MITRE ATT&CK framework under the privilege escalation and persistence categories. Security teams should also conduct comprehensive audits of their baserCMS installations to identify any other potentially vulnerable components and ensure that all plugins and themes are updated to their latest secure versions to prevent similar exploitation scenarios.