CVE-2017-8874 in Mautic
Summary
by MITRE
Multiple cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerabilities in Mautic 1.4.1 allow remote attackers to hijack the authentication of users for requests that (1) delete email campaigns or (2) delete contacts.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 12/06/2022
The CVE-2017-8874 vulnerability represents a critical cross-site request forgery flaw discovered in Mautic version 1.4.1, a popular open-source marketing automation platform. This vulnerability resides in the web application's insufficient validation of request origins and lacks proper CSRF token implementation for sensitive administrative operations. The flaw specifically affects the email campaign deletion and contact deletion functionalities within the Mautic interface, making it particularly dangerous for organizations relying on this platform for customer relationship management and marketing automation. Attackers can exploit this vulnerability by crafting malicious web pages or emails that, when visited by authenticated users, automatically submit requests to the vulnerable Mautic instance without the user's knowledge or consent.
The technical implementation of this CSRF vulnerability stems from the absence of anti-CSRF tokens in the affected administrative endpoints. When users authenticate to the Mautic platform, their session cookies are automatically included with every request, creating a persistent authentication context. However, the vulnerable application fails to verify that requests originate from legitimate sources within the same application context. This allows an attacker to construct specially crafted HTML forms or JavaScript code that, when executed in a victim's browser, submits destructive requests to the Mautic server. The vulnerability specifically targets the DELETE operations for email campaigns and contact records, which are critical components of marketing automation systems where unauthorized deletion can result in significant data loss and operational disruption.
The operational impact of CVE-2017-8874 extends beyond simple data loss, as it can severely compromise the integrity and availability of marketing automation systems. Organizations using Mautic for customer data management face potential exposure of sensitive contact information and marketing campaign data, which could lead to competitive disadvantages and regulatory compliance issues. The vulnerability's remote exploitation capability means attackers do not need physical access to the network or direct system access to cause damage. A successful attack could result in the permanent deletion of valuable customer databases, disruption of marketing campaigns, and potential data breaches that may expose personal information of thousands of contacts. The impact is particularly severe in enterprise environments where Mautic serves as a central hub for customer communication and marketing activities.
Organizations affected by this vulnerability should implement immediate mitigations including upgrading to patched versions of Mautic, implementing proper CSRF token validation mechanisms, and deploying web application firewalls to detect and block malicious requests. The vulnerability aligns with CWE-352, which specifically addresses cross-site request forgery weaknesses in web applications, and maps to ATT&CK technique T1213.002 for data from information repositories, as it enables unauthorized data manipulation and deletion. Security teams should also consider implementing additional layers of protection such as multi-factor authentication for administrative accounts, regular security audits of web applications, and user education regarding suspicious email attachments and links that could contain CSRF attack payloads. The remediation process should include thorough testing to ensure that CSRF protections are properly implemented across all administrative functions and that the application maintains proper session management controls to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive operations.