CVE-2024-1973 in Secure Content Manager
Summary
by MITRE • 03/26/2024
By leveraging the vulnerability, lower-privileged users of Content Manager can manipulate Content Manager clients to elevate privileges and perform unauthorized operations.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 03/26/2024
This vulnerability resides within the Content Manager system where insufficient privilege validation allows low-privileged users to exploit client-side components and escalate their access rights. The flaw represents a classic privilege escalation issue that undermines the fundamental security model of the content management infrastructure. The vulnerability specifically affects the authentication and authorization mechanisms within the Content Manager clients, enabling malicious actors with minimal privileges to manipulate system behaviors and gain elevated access levels.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability exploits weaknesses in the client-side validation processes that should enforce user role restrictions. Attackers can leverage this flaw to bypass normal access controls by manipulating client-side components that are supposed to enforce privilege boundaries. This type of vulnerability typically falls under CWE-284 which addresses improper access control and CWE-79 which covers cross-site scripting vulnerabilities that could be leveraged for privilege escalation. The exploitation pathway involves manipulating client-side code or configuration to alter the execution context and elevate privileges beyond the user's intended access level.
From an operational impact perspective, this vulnerability creates a significant security risk for organizations relying on Content Manager for content management operations. Low-privileged users who should only have read or limited write access can potentially gain administrative privileges, leading to unauthorized content modification, deletion, or exposure of sensitive information. The attack surface expands beyond simple content manipulation to include potential data exfiltration, system compromise, and unauthorized configuration changes that could affect the entire content management ecosystem.
The mitigation strategies should focus on implementing robust client-side validation mechanisms and enforcing strict access controls at multiple layers of the system architecture. Organizations should implement proper input validation and sanitization to prevent manipulation of client components, while also strengthening authentication protocols to ensure that privilege levels are properly enforced. Regular security assessments and code reviews should be conducted to identify similar vulnerabilities in client-side applications. Additionally, implementing principle of least privilege enforcement and monitoring access patterns can help detect anomalous behavior that might indicate exploitation attempts. This vulnerability aligns with ATT&CK technique T1078 which covers valid accounts and T1548 which covers abuse of privileges, making it a critical concern for organizations following standard security frameworks and threat modeling approaches.