CVE-2020-24271
📋 TL;DR
This CVE describes a Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in EasyCMS v1.6 that allows attackers to create unauthorized admin accounts. Attackers can trick authenticated administrators into submitting malicious requests that add new admin users with attacker-controlled credentials. This affects all EasyCMS v1.6 installations with admin interfaces accessible to users.
💻 Affected Systems
- EasyCMS
📦 What is this software?
Easycms by Easycms
⚠️ Risk & Real-World Impact
Worst Case
Complete compromise of the CMS instance where attackers gain administrative access, potentially leading to data theft, website defacement, or installation of backdoors.
Likely Case
Unauthorized admin account creation leading to privilege escalation and potential data manipulation or exfiltration.
If Mitigated
No impact if proper CSRF protections are implemented or if the vulnerable endpoint is properly secured.
🎯 Exploit Status
Exploitation requires tricking an authenticated admin into visiting a malicious page or clicking a malicious link.
🛠️ Fix & Mitigation
✅ Official Fix
Patch Version: Unknown
Vendor Advisory: Unknown
Restart Required: No
Instructions:
No official patch available. Consider upgrading to a newer version if available or implementing CSRF protections manually.
🔧 Temporary Workarounds
Implement CSRF Tokens
allAdd CSRF token validation to all admin form submissions
Manual code modification required - add CSRF token generation and validation to admin forms
Restrict Admin Access
allLimit admin interface access to trusted IP addresses only
Configure web server (Apache/Nginx) to restrict /admin/* paths to specific IPs
🧯 If You Can't Patch
- Implement SameSite cookie attributes and require re-authentication for sensitive actions
- Monitor admin user creation logs and set up alerts for suspicious account creation
🔍 How to Verify
Check if Vulnerable:
Check if EasyCMS version is 1.6 and if admin forms lack CSRF token validationCheck Version:
Check CMS configuration files or admin panel for version informationVerify Fix Applied:
Test that admin account creation forms require valid CSRF tokens📡 Detection & Monitoring
Log Indicators:
- Unexpected admin user creation events
- Multiple failed admin login attempts followed by new user creation
Network Indicators:
- POST requests to /index.php?s=/admin/rbacuser/insert/ from unexpected sources
SIEM Query:
source="web_logs" AND uri="/index.php" AND query_string="*admin*rbacuser*insert*" AND status=200