CVE-2020-18129 in Eyoucms
Summary
by MITRE • 10/23/2020
A CSRF vulnerability in Eyoucms v1.2.7 allows an attacker to add an admin account via login.php.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 11/26/2020
The vulnerability CVE-2020-18129 represents a critical cross-site request forgery flaw discovered in Eyoucms version 1.2.7, a content management system widely used for website development and administration. This CSRF vulnerability specifically targets the login.php endpoint, which serves as a critical access point for administrative functions within the CMS. The flaw arises from the absence of proper anti-CSRF tokens or validation mechanisms in the authentication process, allowing malicious actors to exploit the system's trust relationship with legitimate users. Such vulnerabilities are particularly dangerous because they can be leveraged to perform unauthorized administrative actions without requiring legitimate credentials, effectively bypassing the authentication mechanism entirely.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability stems from the application's failure to validate the origin of requests made to the login.php endpoint. When a legitimate administrator performs login actions, the system should verify that the request originates from a trusted source and contains appropriate validation tokens. However, in Eyoucms v1.2.7, this validation is either completely absent or insufficiently implemented, creating a pathway for attackers to craft malicious requests that appear legitimate to the server. The vulnerability enables attackers to construct specially crafted web pages or emails containing embedded requests that, when visited by an authenticated administrator, automatically execute administrative commands. This flaw aligns with CWE-352, which specifically addresses Cross-Site Request Forgery vulnerabilities, and represents a classic example of how insufficient input validation and request origin verification can compromise system security.
The operational impact of CVE-2020-18129 extends far beyond simple unauthorized access, as it provides attackers with the capability to establish persistent administrative control over affected systems. Once an attacker successfully exploits this vulnerability, they can add new administrator accounts to the system, effectively creating backdoors that persist even after the initial attack vector is patched. This enables attackers to maintain long-term access to the compromised website, potentially leading to data exfiltration, defacement, or the use of the compromised system as a launchpad for further attacks against other systems within the network. The vulnerability also increases the risk of complete system compromise, as administrators may unknowingly perform actions that further expose the system to additional attack vectors. From an attacker's perspective, this vulnerability maps directly to several ATT&CK techniques including T1078 for valid accounts and T1566 for social engineering, as it can be exploited through phishing campaigns that trick administrators into visiting malicious pages.
Organizations utilizing Eyoucms v1.2.7 must implement immediate mitigations to address this vulnerability, including the deployment of proper anti-CSRF token mechanisms that are generated per session and validated on each request to administrative endpoints. The recommended approach involves implementing time-based tokens that are bound to specific user sessions and include unique identifiers that cannot be predicted or reused by attackers. Additionally, organizations should enforce strict origin validation policies that verify the source of all requests to administrative functions and implement proper input sanitization to prevent malicious data from being processed. Security headers such as Content Security Policy should also be configured to limit the sources from which requests can originate, preventing unauthorized scripts from executing within the context of authenticated sessions. Regular security audits and penetration testing should be conducted to identify similar vulnerabilities in other components of the CMS, while also ensuring that all systems are updated to versions that have addressed this specific CSRF flaw. The vulnerability serves as a reminder of the critical importance of maintaining up-to-date security practices and the necessity of implementing defense-in-depth strategies to protect against authenticated attack vectors that can lead to complete system compromise.