CVE-2025-48285 in Falang multilanguage Plugin
Summary
by MITRE • 05/19/2025
Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in sbouey Falang multilanguage allows Cross Site Request Forgery. This issue affects Falang multilanguage: from n/a through 1.3.61.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 05/19/2025
The CVE-2025-48285 vulnerability represents a critical cross-site request forgery weakness within the sbouey Falang multilanguage framework, a widely used content management system for multilingual websites. This vulnerability specifically targets the authentication and session management mechanisms that govern user interactions with the application's administrative interfaces. The flaw enables malicious actors to exploit the lack of proper request validation, allowing unauthorized actions to be executed on behalf of authenticated users without their knowledge or consent. The affected version range spans from the initial release through version 1.3.61, indicating a prolonged period during which the system remained vulnerable to this particular class of attack.
The technical implementation of this CSRF vulnerability stems from the absence of anti-forgery tokens or other validation mechanisms within the framework's request processing pipeline. When users navigate to malicious websites or receive crafted email attachments containing malicious links, the application fails to verify that requests originate from legitimate sources within the same origin. This weakness allows attackers to construct specially crafted requests that, when executed by authenticated users, perform unintended operations such as modifying user permissions, changing administrative settings, or manipulating content within the multilingual website framework. The vulnerability operates at the application layer and specifically impacts the framework's handling of state-changing operations that should require explicit user confirmation.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple data manipulation, potentially enabling complete compromise of multilingual website environments that rely on the Falang framework. Attackers could exploit this weakness to escalate privileges, create backdoor accounts, modify content in multiple languages simultaneously, or disrupt the entire multilingual website infrastructure. The implications are particularly severe for organizations managing complex multilingual content, as the vulnerability could allow unauthorized modifications to critical website elements across different language versions. This could result in significant reputational damage, content tampering, and potential data breaches affecting users across multiple linguistic communities.
Security professionals should implement immediate mitigations including the enforcement of anti-forgery tokens for all state-changing requests, proper validation of request origins, and implementation of the SameSite cookie attributes to prevent cross-site request forgery attacks. Organizations using the Falang multilanguage framework must upgrade to patched versions or implement compensating controls such as request verification tokens, origin validation checks, and comprehensive input sanitization measures. The vulnerability aligns with CWE-352, which specifically addresses cross-site request forgery weaknesses in web applications, and represents a direct violation of the principle of least privilege and proper authentication mechanisms. Additionally, this vulnerability maps to ATT&CK technique T1566.002, which covers social engineering through malicious links, highlighting the importance of implementing robust client-side security measures and user education initiatives to prevent exploitation of such weaknesses.