CVE-2017-3187 in dotCMS Administration Panel
Summary
by MITRE
The dotCMS administration panel, versions 3.7.1 and earlier, are vulnerable to cross-site request forgery. The dotCMS administrator panel contains a cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerability. An attacker can perform actions with the same permissions as a victim user, provided the victim has an active session and is induced to trigger the malicious request. An unauthenticated remote attacker may perform actions with the dotCMS administrator panel with the same permissions of a victim user or execute arbitrary system commands with the permissions of the user running the dotCMS application.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 12/27/2024
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2017-3187 represents a critical cross-site request forgery flaw within the dotCMS administration panel affecting versions 3.7.1 and earlier. This vulnerability resides in the web application's failure to properly validate and authenticate requests originating from external sources, creating a significant security risk for organizations relying on this content management system. The flaw allows attackers to exploit the trust relationship between the web application and its authenticated users, potentially leading to unauthorized administrative actions that could compromise entire systems. This type of vulnerability directly violates the principle of least privilege and demonstrates a fundamental weakness in the application's request validation mechanisms.
The technical implementation of this CSRF vulnerability stems from the absence of proper anti-CSRF tokens or validation mechanisms within the dotCMS administration interface. When a legitimate user maintains an active session within the administration panel, the application fails to verify that requests are originating from the legitimate user interface rather than from malicious third-party websites or applications. This oversight enables attackers to craft malicious web pages or emails containing hidden requests that, when triggered by an authenticated user, execute with the user's privileges. The vulnerability operates at the application layer and affects the authentication and authorization mechanisms that should protect administrative functions within the content management system.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple data manipulation to potentially enable complete system compromise. An unauthenticated remote attacker who successfully exploits this vulnerability can perform actions with the same permissions as a victim user, which could include modifying content, creating new user accounts, accessing sensitive data, or executing arbitrary system commands. The severity escalates when considering that the attacker could potentially execute commands with the permissions of the user running the dotCMS application, which could be a privileged system account. This could lead to complete system takeover, data exfiltration, or disruption of business operations. The vulnerability affects the availability, integrity, and confidentiality of the affected systems, making it a critical concern for organizations using dotCMS.
Organizations should immediately implement mitigations including the deployment of proper anti-CSRF token validation mechanisms, which aligns with the CWE-352 standard for cross-site request forgery vulnerabilities. The implementation should include the generation and validation of unique tokens for each user session that are required for all state-changing operations within the administration panel. Additional protective measures include implementing the SameSite cookie attributes, ensuring proper session management, and applying the principle of defense in depth through network segmentation and access controls. Organizations should also consider implementing web application firewalls to detect and block suspicious requests, and establish robust monitoring and logging mechanisms to detect potential exploitation attempts. The remediation process should include immediate patching of affected systems, thorough security testing, and comprehensive staff training on recognizing and preventing CSRF attacks. This vulnerability demonstrates the critical importance of maintaining up-to-date security practices and implementing proper input validation and request authentication mechanisms in web applications.