CVE-2018-11445 in EasyService Billing
Summary
by MITRE
A CSRF issue was discovered on the User Add/System Settings Page (system-settings-user-new2.php) in EasyService Billing 1.0. A User can be added with the Admin role.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 05/01/2025
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2018-11445 represents a critical cross-site request forgery flaw within the EasyService Billing 1.0 web application. This security weakness specifically targets the user management functionality of the system, particularly affecting the system settings page responsible for user creation and administrative role assignment. The flaw allows malicious actors to manipulate the application's behavior without user consent, potentially leading to unauthorized administrative access and system compromise. The vulnerability exists in the system-settings-user-new2.php endpoint, which handles the creation of new user accounts and their associated role assignments within the billing system's administrative interface.
The technical nature of this CSRF vulnerability stems from the absence of proper anti-CSRF mechanisms in the user creation workflow. When an administrator performs legitimate actions through the web interface, the application fails to validate that requests originate from authenticated users with proper authorization. This lack of validation creates a pathway for attackers to craft malicious requests that, when executed by an authenticated administrator, can create new user accounts with elevated privileges. The specific risk lies in the ability to assign the Admin role during user creation, which would grant the compromised account full administrative control over the billing system. This flaw aligns with CWE-352, which categorizes cross-site request forgery vulnerabilities as weaknesses that enable attackers to perform unauthorized actions on behalf of authenticated users.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple privilege escalation, as it provides attackers with a persistent means of gaining administrative access to the EasyService Billing system. Once an attacker successfully exploits this CSRF flaw, they can create accounts with administrative privileges and maintain long-term access to the billing infrastructure. This compromise could lead to unauthorized financial transactions, data manipulation, unauthorized access to sensitive billing information, and potential system-wide disruption. The vulnerability particularly affects organizations relying on EasyService Billing for financial management, as the administrative access could enable attackers to modify billing records, manipulate customer data, or even redirect financial transactions. The attack vector typically involves tricking an authenticated administrator into visiting a malicious website or clicking on a crafted link that automatically submits a request to the vulnerable endpoint.
Mitigation strategies for this CSRF vulnerability should focus on implementing robust anti-CSRF protection mechanisms within the application. The most effective approach involves deploying unique, unpredictable tokens for each user session that must be validated before any privileged operations are executed. These tokens should be generated server-side and embedded within forms or API requests, ensuring that requests originate from legitimate user interactions. Organizations should also implement proper input validation and output encoding to prevent malicious data from being processed within the application. Additionally, the system should enforce strict access controls and audit logging to detect unauthorized user creation attempts. Security measures aligned with the ATT&CK framework should include monitoring for suspicious administrative activities and implementing network segmentation to limit the potential impact of successful exploitation. Regular security assessments and penetration testing should be conducted to identify similar vulnerabilities in other application components and ensure that anti-CSRF protections remain effective against evolving attack techniques.