CVE-2020-26249 in Red Discord Bot Dashboard
Summary
by MITRE • 12/09/2020
Red Discord Bot Dashboard is an easy-to-use interactive web dashboard to control your Redbot. In Red Discord Bot before version 0.1.7a an RCE exploit has been discovered. This exploit allows Discord users with specially crafted Server names and Usernames/Nicknames to inject code into the webserver front-end code. By abusing this exploit, it's possible to perform destructive actions and/or access sensitive information. This high severity exploit has been fixed on version 0.1.7a. There are no workarounds, bot owners must upgrade their relevant packages (Dashboard module and Dashboard webserver) in order to patch this issue.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 12/14/2020
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2020-26249 affects the Red Discord Bot Dashboard component, which serves as an interactive web interface for managing the Red Discord Bot system. This dashboard module provides administrators with a user-friendly means to control their bot's functionality through a graphical interface rather than command-line operations. The flaw exists within the input sanitization mechanisms of the web application's front-end processing layer, specifically in how it handles server names and user credentials including usernames and nicknames. The vulnerability represents a critical security weakness that allows malicious actors to inject arbitrary code into the web server's execution environment through seemingly benign input fields.
The technical exploitation of this vulnerability occurs through a code injection attack vector that leverages improper input validation in the dashboard's web server component. Attackers can craft specially formatted server names and user credentials that bypass the application's sanitization filters, allowing malicious payloads to be executed within the web server context. This type of vulnerability maps directly to CWE-94, which describes "Improper Control of Generation of Code ('Code Injection')" and falls under the broader category of CWE-79, "Cross-site Scripting (XSS)" when considering the web interface implications. The attack chain typically involves an attacker creating a malicious server name or nickname containing executable code sequences that get processed by the vulnerable web application, leading to unauthorized code execution on the server hosting the dashboard.
The operational impact of this vulnerability is severe and potentially devastating for Red Discord Bot administrators. Successful exploitation enables attackers to perform arbitrary code execution on the web server hosting the dashboard, which could lead to complete system compromise, data exfiltration, and unauthorized access to sensitive information stored within the bot's configuration and user data. The vulnerability affects the web server front-end code execution environment, meaning that attackers could potentially escalate privileges, modify bot configurations, access user data, or even use the compromised system as a pivot point for attacking other network resources. Given that the dashboard provides administrative control over the bot, this represents a high-value target for attackers seeking to gain persistent access to Discord server environments.
Mitigation of this vulnerability requires immediate action from affected administrators, as no effective workarounds exist for the specific code injection flaw. The fix implemented in version 0.1.7a addresses the root cause by strengthening input validation and sanitization procedures within the dashboard's web server component. System administrators must upgrade both the Dashboard module and the associated webserver components to the patched version to eliminate the risk. The remediation process should include comprehensive testing of the updated components to ensure that the vulnerability has been properly addressed without introducing new issues. Organizations should also implement additional security monitoring to detect potential exploitation attempts and consider implementing network segmentation to limit the potential impact if other components of the system are compromised. The vulnerability's classification as a high-severity issue in the ATT&CK framework aligns with techniques such as T1059.007 for "Command and Scripting Interpreter: JavaScript" and T1071.004 for "Application Layer Protocol: DNS," which are commonly used in similar code injection attack scenarios.