CVE-2018-10127 in XYHCMS
Summary
by MITRE
An issue was discovered in XYHCMS 3.5. It has CSRF via an index.php?g=Manage&m=Rbac&a=addUser request, resulting in addition of an account with the administrator role.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 01/25/2020
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2018-10127 represents a critical cross-site request forgery weakness within XYHCMS version 3.5 that directly compromises the system's authentication and authorization mechanisms. This flaw exists in the management interface where the application fails to implement proper anti-CSRF measures for the addUser functionality, specifically when processing requests through the index.php?g=Manage&m=Rbac&a=addUser endpoint. The vulnerability allows an attacker to construct malicious web pages or emails that, when visited by an authenticated administrator, can automatically submit requests to create new user accounts with elevated privileges.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability stems from the absence of anti-CSRF tokens in the web application's user management interface. When administrators navigate to the RBAC (Role-Based Access Control) management section to add new users, the application does not validate the origin of requests or require unique tokens that would prevent unauthorized requests from being executed. This design flaw aligns with CWE-352, which specifically addresses Cross-Site Request Forgery vulnerabilities where web applications fail to validate that requests originate from legitimate sources. The vulnerability operates at the application layer and can be exploited through various attack vectors including social engineering, phishing campaigns, or by leveraging compromised user sessions.
The operational impact of this vulnerability is severe as it directly enables privilege escalation attacks without requiring authentication credentials for the target account. An attacker who successfully exploits this vulnerability can create new administrator accounts with full system access, potentially leading to complete system compromise, data exfiltration, and unauthorized modifications to the CMS configuration. The vulnerability affects the integrity and confidentiality of the entire system, as the newly created administrator accounts can perform any action within the CMS environment. This weakness particularly impacts the application's authorization controls and can result in unauthorized access to sensitive administrative functions that should only be available to legitimate administrators.
Security mitigations for this vulnerability should focus on implementing proper anti-CSRF protection mechanisms throughout the application's management interface. The most effective approach involves generating and validating unique anti-CSRF tokens for each user session and ensuring they are required for all state-changing operations including user creation, configuration changes, and privilege modifications. Organizations should implement the principle of least privilege by requiring multi-factor authentication for administrative functions and regularly auditing user accounts to detect unauthorized additions. Additionally, the application should validate the referer header and implement Content Security Policy headers to further reduce the attack surface. This vulnerability demonstrates the importance of following secure coding practices as outlined in the OWASP Top Ten and aligns with ATT&CK technique T1078 which covers valid accounts and credential access through privilege escalation. The fix requires comprehensive code review of all administrative endpoints and implementation of proper session management and request validation mechanisms to prevent unauthorized account creation and maintain the system's security posture.