CVE-2018-18734 in Catfish
Summary
by MITRE
A CSRF issue was discovered in admin/Index/addmanageuser.html in Catfish CMS 4.8.30.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 04/07/2020
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2018-18734 represents a cross-site request forgery flaw within the Catfish CMS 4.8.30 administration interface. This issue specifically affects the admin/Index/addmanageuser.html endpoint, which is responsible for user management functions within the content management system. The flaw allows authenticated administrators to be tricked into executing unintended actions without their knowledge or consent, potentially leading to unauthorized user creation or modification within the CMS environment.
This vulnerability stems from the absence of proper anti-CSRF mechanisms in the affected administrative page. The Catfish CMS implementation fails to validate the origin of requests made to the addmanageuser.html endpoint, meaning that malicious actors can craft specially crafted requests that, when executed by an authenticated administrator, will perform actions such as creating new administrative accounts or modifying existing user permissions. The vulnerability is particularly concerning because it targets the administrative interface where sensitive system operations are performed, making it a high-impact issue for organizations relying on this CMS version.
The operational impact of this CSRF vulnerability extends beyond simple unauthorized user creation. An attacker who successfully exploits this flaw could potentially establish persistent access to the CMS administration panel, create backdoor accounts with elevated privileges, or manipulate existing user permissions to gain unauthorized access to sensitive content and system configurations. This type of vulnerability directly violates the principle of least privilege and can lead to complete system compromise if the compromised administrative account has full access rights. The vulnerability also represents a significant risk to data integrity and confidentiality within the CMS environment, as it enables attackers to modify user access controls and potentially gain access to restricted content.
From a security standards perspective, this vulnerability aligns with CWE-352, which specifically addresses Cross-Site Request Forgery weaknesses in software applications. The flaw demonstrates inadequate input validation and request origin verification, which are fundamental requirements for preventing CSRF attacks according to industry best practices. The ATT&CK framework categorizes this vulnerability under the T1078 technique for Valid Accounts, as successful exploitation could result in attackers establishing persistent access through newly created administrative accounts. Organizations using Catfish CMS 4.8.30 should immediately implement mitigations including the addition of anti-CSRF tokens to all administrative forms and the implementation of proper referer header validation. Additionally, security patches should be applied to update to a version of Catfish CMS that addresses this vulnerability, as the original version contains no built-in protection against such attacks. Network segmentation and monitoring of administrative access patterns should also be implemented to detect potential exploitation attempts and minimize the impact of any successful attacks.