CVE-2019-15491 in openITCOCKPIT
Summary
by MITRE
openITCOCKPIT before 3.7.1 has CSRF, aka RVID 2-445b21.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 12/01/2023
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2019-15491 affects openITCOCKPIT versions prior to 3.7.1 and represents a cross-site request forgery flaw that allows attackers to perform unauthorized actions within the application. This vulnerability specifically impacts the administrative functionality of the monitoring platform, which is widely used for network and system monitoring in enterprise environments. The issue manifests as a weakness in the application's request validation mechanisms, where the system fails to properly verify the origin of HTTP requests, making it susceptible to exploitation by malicious actors who can craft requests that appear to originate from legitimate users with administrative privileges.
The technical implementation of this CSRF vulnerability stems from the absence of proper anti-CSRF tokens in critical administrative endpoints within the openITCOCKPIT application. When users authenticate to the system, they maintain a session that can be exploited by attackers who craft malicious requests that leverage the user's existing authenticated session. This flaw falls under CWE-352, which specifically addresses Cross-Site Request Forgery vulnerabilities in software applications. The vulnerability is particularly concerning because openITCOCKPIT serves as a critical monitoring tool for IT infrastructure, where administrative access can provide comprehensive control over network monitoring systems, alerting mechanisms, and configuration settings. Attackers could leverage this vulnerability to execute unauthorized administrative actions such as modifying monitoring configurations, creating new user accounts, or altering alert thresholds that could compromise the integrity of the entire monitoring infrastructure.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple privilege escalation as it can lead to complete compromise of the monitoring environment. An attacker who successfully exploits this CSRF flaw could potentially disrupt critical monitoring services, create backdoors for persistent access, or manipulate alerting systems to hide malicious activities. The attack typically requires the victim to be authenticated to the application and to visit a malicious website or click on a crafted link, which then automatically submits requests to the openITCOCKPIT application. This makes the vulnerability particularly dangerous in environments where administrators frequently browse untrusted websites or where users may be targeted through social engineering campaigns. The vulnerability's presence in the application's authentication and session management components creates a persistent risk that can be exploited repeatedly until the underlying code is patched.
Mitigation strategies for CVE-2019-15491 primarily focus on updating the openITCOCKPIT application to version 3.7.1 or later, where the CSRF protection mechanisms have been properly implemented. Organizations should also implement additional defensive measures such as network segmentation to isolate monitoring systems, implementing strict web application firewalls that can detect and block suspicious request patterns, and conducting regular security assessments of the monitoring infrastructure. The remediation process should include comprehensive testing to ensure that all administrative endpoints properly validate request origins and that anti-CSRF tokens are consistently implemented throughout the application. Security teams should also review access controls and audit logs to detect any potential exploitation attempts that may have occurred before the patch was applied. Organizations using openITCOCKPIT should consider implementing additional monitoring for administrative activities and establishing incident response procedures specifically tailored to address CSRF-related compromises in their monitoring environments. This vulnerability demonstrates the critical importance of proper input validation and request origin verification in web applications, particularly those handling sensitive operational data in enterprise environments.