CVE-2019-25451
📋 TL;DR
phpMoAdmin 1.1.5 contains a CSRF vulnerability that allows attackers to trick authenticated administrators into performing unauthorized database operations like creating, dropping, or repairing databases and collections. This affects any system running the vulnerable phpMoAdmin web interface where administrators might visit malicious sites while authenticated.
💻 Affected Systems
- phpMoAdmin
📦 What is this software?
Phpmoadmin by Phpmoadmin
⚠️ Risk & Real-World Impact
Worst Case
Complete database destruction or unauthorized database creation leading to data loss, service disruption, or data exfiltration through malicious database operations.
Likely Case
Unauthorized database modifications or deletions by attackers tricking administrators into clicking malicious links, potentially causing data corruption or loss.
If Mitigated
Minimal impact with proper CSRF protections, network segmentation, and administrator awareness training in place.
🎯 Exploit Status
Exploitation requires social engineering to trick authenticated users into visiting malicious pages. Public exploit code exists in Exploit-DB.
🛠️ Fix & Mitigation
✅ Official Fix
Patch Version: Not available
Vendor Advisory: Not available
Restart Required: No
Instructions:
No official patch exists. Remove or replace phpMoAdmin with a maintained alternative. If keeping, implement CSRF protections manually.
🔧 Temporary Workarounds
Implement CSRF Tokens
allAdd CSRF token validation to all state-changing operations in moadmin.php
Manual code modification required - add token generation and validation to PHP scripts
Restrict Access
allLimit phpMoAdmin access to specific IP addresses or internal networks only
Use web server configuration (e.g., Apache .htaccess, Nginx allow/deny) to restrict access
🧯 If You Can't Patch
- Implement network segmentation to isolate phpMoAdmin from user networks
- Require administrators to use separate browser sessions or private browsing for phpMoAdmin access
🔍 How to Verify
Check if Vulnerable:
Check if phpMoAdmin version is 1.1.5 or earlier by examining the source code or installation files.Check Version:
grep -r 'version\|VERSION' /path/to/phpmoadmin/ | head -5Verify Fix Applied:
Test that CSRF tokens are required for all database operations and that unauthorized requests are rejected.📡 Detection & Monitoring
Log Indicators:
- Multiple database create/drop/repair operations from same IP in short time
- GET requests to moadmin.php with action, db, collection parameters without referrer validation
Network Indicators:
- HTTP GET requests to moadmin.php with database operation parameters from unexpected sources
SIEM Query:
source="web_access.log" AND uri="/moadmin.php" AND (action="create" OR action="drop" OR action="repair")