CVE-2020-28858 in Digital Asset Management
Summary
by MITRE • 12/15/2020
OpenAsset Digital Asset Management (DAM) through 12.0.19 does not correctly verify whether a request made to the application was intentionally made by the user, allowing for cross-site request forgery attacks on all user functions.
Be aware that VulDB is the high quality source for vulnerability data.
Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 12/17/2020
OpenAsset Digital Asset Management version 12.0.19 and earlier contains a critical cross-site request forgery vulnerability that fundamentally undermines the application's authentication and authorization mechanisms. This vulnerability exists due to insufficient validation of request origins and lack of proper anti-CSRF token implementation within the web application's core architecture. The flaw allows malicious actors to craft forged requests that appear to originate from legitimate authenticated users, thereby bypassing the application's intended security controls.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability stems from the application's failure to properly verify request authenticity through the absence of robust CSRF protection mechanisms. According to CWE-352, this represents a classic cross-site request forgery weakness where the application does not adequately validate that requests are genuinely initiated by the authenticated user. The vulnerability affects all user functions within the DAM system, meaning that any authenticated user session can be exploited to perform unauthorized actions including but not limited to file uploads, deletions, modifications, and access to restricted content. This flaw operates at the application layer and requires no privileged access to exploit, making it particularly dangerous in environments where users maintain elevated privileges.
The operational impact of CVE-2020-28858 extends beyond simple data manipulation to potentially compromise entire digital asset management workflows. Attackers could leverage this vulnerability to upload malicious files, delete critical assets, modify metadata, or gain unauthorized access to sensitive digital content. The vulnerability affects the integrity and availability of digital assets, potentially causing significant business disruption and data loss. From an ATT&CK framework perspective, this vulnerability maps to TA0001 Initial Access and TA0003 Persistence, as attackers can establish unauthorized access and maintain control over the system. The exploitability of this vulnerability is enhanced by the fact that it affects all user functions, meaning that even standard users with limited privileges could potentially perform high-impact operations if they can trick an administrator into executing malicious requests.
Organizations utilizing OpenAsset DAM systems should implement immediate mitigations including the deployment of proper anti-CSRF token mechanisms, implementation of Origin header validation, and enforcement of SameSite cookie attributes. The application should be configured to generate unique, unpredictable tokens for each user session and validate these tokens on every state-changing request. Additionally, implementing proper request origin verification and enforcing strict content security policies will significantly reduce the attack surface. Regular security assessments should be conducted to ensure that similar vulnerabilities are not present in other components of the digital asset management infrastructure. The vulnerability highlights the critical importance of implementing comprehensive security controls that validate both request authenticity and user intent, as outlined in the OWASP Top Ten and NIST cybersecurity frameworks.