CVE-2024-1439 in LMS
Summary
by MITRE • 02/12/2024
Inadequate access control in Moodle LMS. This vulnerability could allow a local user with a student role to create arbitrary events intended for users with higher roles. It could also allow the attacker to add events to the calendar of all users without their prior consent.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 10/10/2024
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2024-1439 represents a critical access control flaw within the Moodle Learning Management System that fundamentally undermines the platform's security model. This weakness exists in the calendar event management functionality where proper authorization checks fail to validate user privileges before allowing event creation and scheduling operations. The vulnerability specifically affects the privilege escalation mechanisms within Moodle's role-based access control system, creating a pathway for lower-privileged users to bypass intended security boundaries.
The technical implementation of this flaw stems from insufficient input validation and authorization checks within the calendar event creation process. When students or other lower-privileged users attempt to create calendar events, the system fails to properly verify whether the user has the necessary permissions to schedule events for users with higher roles such as teachers, administrators, or managers. This oversight allows attackers to manipulate event parameters to target higher-privilege accounts, effectively creating a backdoor for unauthorized access to restricted calendar functionalities. The vulnerability is classified under CWE-284 Access Control Flaws, specifically addressing inadequate privileges for critical operations.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple privilege escalation, creating significant risks for organizational security and user privacy. Attackers can exploit this weakness to create malicious calendar events that appear to originate from legitimate high-privilege users, potentially enabling social engineering attacks, phishing campaigns, or unauthorized scheduling of events that could disrupt educational processes. The ability to add events to all users' calendars without consent represents a serious breach of user privacy and could be leveraged to spread misinformation, create confusion, or establish persistent access points within the learning environment. This vulnerability directly impacts the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the Moodle platform's calendar services.
Organizations utilizing Moodle should prioritize immediate remediation through the application of vendor patches and security updates. The recommended mitigation strategy includes implementing additional access control layers, strengthening role-based permissions, and conducting comprehensive security audits of calendar functionality. System administrators should review and tighten existing user role assignments, ensuring that calendar event creation privileges are properly restricted to authorized personnel only. Network monitoring should be enhanced to detect anomalous calendar activity patterns that might indicate exploitation attempts. This vulnerability aligns with ATT&CK technique T1078 Valid Accounts, as it exploits legitimate user accounts to gain unauthorized access to restricted functionalities, and T1566 Phishing, as the malicious calendar events could be used to deliver phishing content to unsuspecting users. The incident response plan should include procedures for investigating unauthorized calendar events and restoring affected user accounts to prevent ongoing exploitation.