CVE-2020-23451
📋 TL;DR
This Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in Spiceworks allows attackers to trick authenticated administrators into performing unintended actions, potentially escalating privileges. It affects Spiceworks versions up to 7.5.00107. Attackers can exploit this by luring administrators to malicious web pages while logged into Spiceworks.
💻 Affected Systems
- Spiceworks
📦 What is this software?
Spiceworks by Spiceworks
⚠️ Risk & Real-World Impact
Worst Case
Full administrative takeover of the Spiceworks instance, allowing attacker to create new admin accounts, modify existing users, and potentially pivot to other systems.
Likely Case
Privilege escalation where attackers gain administrative access to Spiceworks, enabling them to view sensitive IT infrastructure data and modify system configurations.
If Mitigated
Limited impact if proper CSRF protections and network segmentation are in place, with only authenticated session hijacking possible.
🎯 Exploit Status
Exploitation requires the victim to be authenticated as an administrator and visit a malicious webpage. The exploit chain may involve XSS as referenced in the advisory links.
🛠️ Fix & Mitigation
✅ Official Fix
Patch Version: > 7.5.00107
Vendor Advisory: http://spiceworks.com
Restart Required: Yes
Instructions:
1. Backup current Spiceworks installation and database. 2. Download latest version from Spiceworks website. 3. Run installer to upgrade. 4. Restart Spiceworks service. 5. Verify version is > 7.5.00107.
🔧 Temporary Workarounds
CSRF Token Implementation
allAdd CSRF tokens to all state-changing requests in custom implementations
SameSite Cookie Enforcement
allConfigure session cookies with SameSite=Strict attribute
🧯 If You Can't Patch
- Implement network segmentation to isolate Spiceworks from user browsing activities
- Use separate browser profiles or machines for administrative tasks vs general web browsing
🔍 How to Verify
Check if Vulnerable:
Check Spiceworks version in web interface under Help > About or via command line: 'spiceworks --version'Check Version:
spiceworks --versionVerify Fix Applied:
Confirm version is > 7.5.00107 and test CSRF protection by attempting to submit forms without valid tokens📡 Detection & Monitoring
Log Indicators:
- Multiple failed privilege escalation attempts
- Unusual user creation/modification events from unexpected IPs
- CSRF token validation failures
Network Indicators:
- HTTP POST requests to /settings/v1/users without Referer headers
- Cross-origin requests to Spiceworks endpoints
SIEM Query:
source="spiceworks" AND (event="user_modified" OR event="user_created") AND src_ip NOT IN [admin_ips]