CVE-2024-1632 in Sitefinity
Summary
by MITRE • 02/28/2024
Low-privileged users with access to the Sitefinity backend may obtain sensitive information from the site's administrative area.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 12/16/2024
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2024-1632 represents a critical authorization flaw within the Sitefinity content management system that allows low-privileged users to access administrative functions and sensitive data. This issue stems from insufficient access controls and improper privilege validation mechanisms within the backend administration interface. The flaw specifically affects the authorization model implementation where user permissions are not adequately enforced when accessing administrative areas of the system. Attackers exploiting this vulnerability can potentially gain access to sensitive information including user credentials, system configurations, and administrative data that should only be accessible to authorized administrators.
The technical root cause of this vulnerability lies in the application's failure to properly validate user privileges before granting access to administrative functions. This weakness creates a path for privilege escalation where unauthenticated or low-privileged users can bypass normal access controls and navigate to restricted administrative areas. The flaw manifests when the application fails to verify that the current user possesses the necessary administrative privileges before rendering administrative pages or exposing administrative APIs. This type of vulnerability is classified under CWE-285 which addresses improper authorization in software systems. The vulnerability can be exploited through direct manipulation of access control checks or by leveraging existing user sessions with insufficient privilege validation.
The operational impact of CVE-2024-1632 extends beyond simple information disclosure to encompass potential system compromise and data breaches. Low-privileged users who exploit this vulnerability can access sensitive administrative data including database connection strings, API keys, system configurations, and user management information. This access could enable attackers to perform further attacks such as credential theft, system manipulation, or lateral movement within the network. The vulnerability also poses significant risk to business continuity as it allows unauthorized access to critical system information that could be used to plan more sophisticated attacks. According to ATT&CK framework, this vulnerability maps to T1078 (Valid Accounts) and T1566 (Phishing) as attackers could use the gained access to establish persistent access or conduct further social engineering campaigns.
Organizations utilizing Sitefinity systems should implement immediate mitigations to address this vulnerability. The primary remediation involves strengthening access control mechanisms and ensuring that all administrative functions properly validate user privileges before granting access. This includes implementing proper session management, enforcing role-based access controls, and ensuring that administrative APIs require appropriate authentication and authorization checks. Security patches should be applied immediately to address the underlying authorization flaws in the Sitefinity platform. Additional mitigations include implementing network segmentation to limit access to administrative areas, monitoring access logs for suspicious activity, and conducting regular security assessments to identify similar authorization flaws. Organizations should also consider implementing multi-factor authentication for administrative accounts and establishing principle of least privilege access controls to minimize potential damage from such vulnerabilities.