CVE-2016-7123 in Mailman
Summary
by MITRE
Cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the admin web interface in GNU Mailman before 2.1.15 allows remote attackers to hijack the authentication of administrators.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 09/14/2022
The CVE-2016-7123 vulnerability represents a critical cross-site request forgery flaw discovered in the administrative web interface of GNU Mailman versions prior to 2.1.15. This vulnerability falls under the CWE-352 category, which specifically addresses Cross-Site Request Forgery attacks where an attacker can induce users to perform actions they did not intend to execute. The flaw exists within the administrative web interface of GNU Mailman, a widely used open-source mailing list management system that serves thousands of organizations worldwide for managing email distribution lists and newsletters.
The technical implementation of this CSRF vulnerability stems from the absence of proper authentication tokens or anti-CSRF mechanisms within the administrative interface forms and requests. When administrators access the web-based management console to perform critical operations such as adding or removing users, modifying list configurations, or changing administrative settings, the system fails to validate that these requests originate from legitimate administrative sessions. Attackers can exploit this weakness by crafting malicious web pages or email content that, when viewed by an authenticated administrator, automatically submits forged requests to the Mailman administrative interface without the administrator's knowledge or consent.
The operational impact of this vulnerability is severe and potentially devastating for organizations relying on GNU Mailman for their email communication infrastructure. An attacker who successfully exploits this CSRF vulnerability could gain unauthorized administrative access to mailing lists, modify list memberships, delete critical mailing list configurations, or even disable entire mailing list services. This could result in significant disruption to communication channels, potential data loss, unauthorized access to sensitive mailing list information, and compromise of the organization's email infrastructure. The vulnerability particularly affects organizations where administrative access is not properly secured through additional authentication layers or where administrators frequently access the administrative interface from shared or public computing environments.
Mitigation strategies for CVE-2016-7123 involve immediate patching of GNU Mailman installations to version 2.1.15 or later, which incorporates proper CSRF protection mechanisms including the implementation of anti-CSRF tokens. Organizations should also implement additional security controls such as network segmentation to limit access to the administrative interface, require multi-factor authentication for administrative accounts, and conduct regular security audits of web applications. The vulnerability demonstrates the importance of implementing proper session management and request validation techniques as outlined in the OWASP Top Ten security principles and aligns with ATT&CK technique T1548.001 for Abuse of Cloud Admin APIs, though in this case affecting local administrative interfaces rather than cloud services. Security teams should also consider implementing web application firewalls and monitoring for suspicious administrative activities that could indicate exploitation attempts.