CVE-2019-7654 in Streaming Engine
Summary
by MITRE
Wowza Streaming Engine 4.7.7 and 4.7.8 suffers from multiple CSRF vulnerabilities. For example, an administrator, by following a link, can be tricked into making unwanted changes such as adding another admin user via enginemanager/server/user/edit.htm in the Server->Users component.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 03/27/2024
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2019-7654 represents a critical cross-site request forgery flaw affecting Wowza Streaming Engine versions 4.7.7 and 4.7.8. This issue resides within the web-based administrative interface of the streaming media server software, specifically targeting the Server->Users component where administrative functions are exposed through web forms. The vulnerability stems from the absence of proper anti-CSRF mechanisms in the affected web endpoints, making it possible for malicious actors to exploit the trust relationship between authenticated administrators and the application.
The technical implementation of this CSRF vulnerability allows an attacker to construct malicious web pages or send deceptive links that, when clicked by an authenticated administrator, automatically submit requests to the Wowza Streaming Engine administration interface. The specific endpoint mentioned in the vulnerability description at enginemanager/server/user/edit.htm demonstrates how the application fails to validate the origin of requests, particularly in the user management functionality. This flaw enables unauthorized users to manipulate the administrative interface without proper authentication, potentially adding new administrator accounts, modifying existing user permissions, or performing other privileged operations.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple privilege escalation as it fundamentally compromises the security model of the Wowza Streaming Engine administration interface. An attacker who successfully exploits this vulnerability can gain persistent access to the streaming server's administrative functions, potentially leading to complete system compromise. The attack vector is particularly dangerous because it requires no special credentials beyond the ability to convince an administrator to click a malicious link, making it difficult to detect and prevent through traditional authentication mechanisms. This vulnerability directly violates the principle of least privilege and undermines the integrity of the administrative access controls.
The vulnerability aligns with CWE-352, which specifically addresses Cross-Site Request Forgery, and represents a clear violation of the web application security principle that all state-changing operations should be protected against unauthorized requests. From an ATT&CK framework perspective, this vulnerability maps to techniques involving privilege escalation and persistence through administrative access manipulation. The affected system components include the web application layer of Wowza Streaming Engine, specifically the administrative user interface and its associated session management mechanisms. Organizations using these vulnerable versions face significant risk of unauthorized access to their streaming infrastructure, potentially leading to content theft, service disruption, or complete system compromise.
Mitigation strategies for this vulnerability should include immediate patching of the affected Wowza Streaming Engine versions to the latest available releases that contain CSRF protection mechanisms. Administrators should implement additional security controls such as network segmentation to limit access to the administrative interface, require multi-factor authentication for administrative accounts, and monitor for suspicious administrative activities. The implementation of proper CSRF tokens in all state-changing web requests, along with referer header validation and SameSite cookie attributes, would provide comprehensive protection against this class of attack. Additionally, security awareness training for administrators can help prevent social engineering attacks that rely on tricking users into clicking malicious links, though this approach alone is insufficient to address the underlying technical flaw.