CVE-2018-6180
📋 TL;DR
CVE-2018-6180 is an authentication bypass vulnerability in Online Voting System 1.0 that allows unauthenticated attackers to reset passwords for any user account. This affects all deployments of Online Voting System 1.0, potentially compromising election integrity and system security.
💻 Affected Systems
- Online Voting System
📦 What is this software?
Online Voting Platform by Themashabrand
⚠️ Risk & Real-World Impact
Worst Case
Complete system takeover where attackers can compromise administrator accounts, manipulate election results, steal sensitive voter data, and deploy ransomware or other malware.
Likely Case
Attackers gain unauthorized access to user accounts, potentially altering votes, accessing personal information, and disrupting election processes.
If Mitigated
With proper network segmentation and monitoring, impact is limited to the voting application only, with no lateral movement to other systems.
🎯 Exploit Status
Multiple public exploit scripts are available that require minimal technical skill to execute.
🛠️ Fix & Mitigation
✅ Official Fix
Patch Version: Not available
Vendor Advisory: Not available
Restart Required: No
Instructions:
No official patch exists. The only secure remediation is to upgrade to a different, maintained voting system or implement custom security fixes.
🔧 Temporary Workarounds
Implement Web Application Firewall (WAF) Rules
allBlock requests to the vulnerable profile password reset endpoint
WAF specific - configure rules to block POST requests to /profile/update_password.php or similar endpoints
Network Access Control
linuxRestrict access to the voting system to authorized networks only
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -s 192.168.1.0/24 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 443 -s 192.168.1.0/24 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -j DROP
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 443 -j DROP
🧯 If You Can't Patch
- Isolate the voting system on a dedicated network segment with strict firewall rules
- Implement multi-factor authentication for all administrative accounts and monitor for unauthorized access attempts
🔍 How to Verify
Check if Vulnerable:
Attempt to access the password reset functionality without authentication by sending a POST request to the profile update endpoint with another user's ID parameterCheck Version:
Check the application's version in the admin panel or by examining the source code for version identifiersVerify Fix Applied:
Test that password reset functionality requires proper authentication and authorization checks📡 Detection & Monitoring
Log Indicators:
- Multiple failed authentication attempts followed by successful password reset for different user IDs
- Password reset requests from unexpected IP addresses
- POST requests to profile update endpoints with different user ID parameters
Network Indicators:
- Unusual patterns of HTTP POST requests to profile management endpoints
- Traffic from external IPs to internal voting system
SIEM Query:
source="web_server" AND (uri="/profile/update_password.php" OR uri="/profile/reset_password.php") AND status=200 AND user_agent NOT IN ("expected_user_agents")