__________________________________________________________ The U.S. Department of Energy Computer Incident Advisory Capability ___ __ __ _ ___ / | /_\ / \___ __|__ / \ \___ __________________________________________________________ INFORMATION BULLETIN cPanel XSRF Vulnerabilities [US-CERT Vulnerability Note VU#584089] May 2, 2008 19:00 GMT Number S-283 ______________________________________________________________________________ PROBLEM: cPanel contains multiple cross-site request forgery (XSRF) vulnerabilities which may allow an attacker to execute arbitrary commands. PLATFORM: cPanel DAMAGE: An attacker may be able to take actions that only authorized administrators should be able to execute. SOLUTION: There is currently no practical solution. Please see the bulletin below to enable referrer checking. ______________________________________________________________________________ VULNERABILITY The risk is MEDIUM. If successfully exploited, these ASSESSMENT: vulnerabilities may allow an attacker to execute arbitrary commands. ______________________________________________________________________________ CVSS 2 BASE SCORE: 5.8 TEMPORAL SCORE: 5.2 VECTOR: (AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:N/E:POC/RL:U/RC:C) ______________________________________________________________________________ LINKS: CIAC BULLETIN: http://www.ciac.org/ciac/bulletins/s-283.shtml ORIGINAL BULLETIN: http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/584089 ______________________________________________________________________________ [***** Start US-CERT Vulnerability Note VU#584089 *****] Vulnerability Note VU#584089 cPanel XSRF vulnerabilities Overview cPanel contains multiple cross-site request forgery (XSRF) vulnerabilities. If successfully exploited, these vulnerabilities may allow an attacker to execute arbitrary commands. I. Description cPanel is a web-based tool that is designed to automate and control web sites and servers. cPanel contains multiple cross-site request forgery (XSRF) vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities may be triggered by a remote attacker who convinces an administrator to browse to a malicious web site while logged into their cPanel account. II. Impact An attacker may be able to take actions that only authorized administrators should be able to execute. III. Solution We are currently unaware of a practical solution to this problem. Enable referrer checking Referrer checking may mitigate some XSRF attacks. To enable referrer checking, follow the below steps. Note that referrer checking may cause some applications to fail. navigate to Server configuration go to Tweak Settings go to Security in WebHost Manager check the box and save the page Do not browse to untrusted sites Administrators can mitigate XSRF vulnerabilities in cPanel and other browser-based tools by not browsing to untrusted websites while logged into their account. Systems Affected Vendor Status Date Updated cPanel Inc. Vulnerable 28-Apr-2008 References http://www.rooksecurity.com/blog/?p=7 http://changelog.cpanel.net/ http://www.owasp.org/index.php/Cross-Site_Request_Forgery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XSRF Credit Thanks to Michael Brooks for information that was used in this report. This document was written by Ryan Giobbi. Other Information Date Public 05/01/2008 Date First Published 04/30/2008 03:47:27 PM Date Last Updated 05/01/2008 CERT Advisory CVE Name US-CERT Technical Alerts Metric 2.25 Document Revision 15 [***** End US-CERT Vulnerability Note VU#584089 *****] _______________________________________________________________________________ CIAC wishes to acknowledge the contributions of US-CERT for the information contained in this bulletin. _______________________________________________________________________________ CIAC, the Computer Incident Advisory Capability, is the computer security incident response team for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the emergency backup response team for the National Institutes of Health (NIH). CIAC is located at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. CIAC is also a founding member of FIRST, the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams, a global organization established to foster cooperation and coordination among computer security teams worldwide. CIAC services are available to DOE, DOE contractors, and the NIH. CIAC can be contacted at: Voice: +1 925-422-8193 (7x24) FAX: +1 925-423-8002 STU-III: +1 925-423-2604 E-mail: ciac@ciac.org Previous CIAC notices, anti-virus software, and other information are available from the CIAC Computer Security Archive. World Wide Web: http://www.ciac.org/ Anonymous FTP: ftp.ciac.org PLEASE NOTE: Many users outside of the DOE, ESnet, and NIH computing communities receive CIAC bulletins. If you are not part of these communities, please contact your agency's response team to report incidents. Your agency's team will coordinate with CIAC. The Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) is a world-wide organization. A list of FIRST member organizations and their constituencies can be obtained via WWW at http://www.first.org/. This document was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government. Neither the United States Government nor the University of California nor any of their employees, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference herein to any specific commercial products, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation or favoring by the United States Government or the University of California. The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or the University of California, and shall not be used for advertising or product endorsement purposes. LAST 10 CIAC BULLETINS ISSUED (Previous bulletins available from CIAC) S-213: Nukedit 'email' Parameter Vulnerability S-214: SurgeMail and WebMail 'Page' Command Vulnerability S-215: Symantec Backup Exec Scheduler ActiveX Control Multiple Vulnerabilities S-216: Juniper Networks Secure Access 2000 'rdremediate.cgi' Vulnerability S-217: Drupal Multiple HTML Vulnerabilities S-218: gd Security Update S-219: Juniper Networks Secure Access 2000 Web Root Path Vulnerability S-220: PHP-Nuke My_eGallery Module 'gid' Parameter Vulnerability S-221: Learn2 STRunner ActiveX Control Vulnerabilities S-222: Evolution Security Update