CVE-2024-48572
📋 TL;DR
An unauthenticated user enumeration vulnerability in AquilaCMS allows attackers to discover valid email addresses through the 'Add a user' feature. This occurs due to insufficient input validation where user input is processed as a regular expression and matched against existing email addresses to find duplicates. All AquilaCMS installations up to version 1.409.20 are affected.
💻 Affected Systems
- AquilaCMS
📦 What is this software?
Aquilacms by Aquila Cms
⚠️ Risk & Real-World Impact
Worst Case
Attackers build comprehensive email lists for targeted phishing campaigns, credential stuffing attacks, or social engineering against organization members.
Likely Case
Attackers harvest valid email addresses for spam lists, reconnaissance for future attacks, or verification of user accounts in the system.
If Mitigated
Limited exposure with only partial email enumeration possible before detection and blocking.
🎯 Exploit Status
Public proof-of-concept available on GitHub. Exploitation requires no authentication and minimal technical skill.
🛠️ Fix & Mitigation
✅ Official Fix
Patch Version: Unknown
Vendor Advisory: Unknown
Restart Required: No
Instructions:
1. Monitor AquilaCMS security advisories for patch release. 2. Upgrade to fixed version when available. 3. Apply patch according to vendor instructions.
🔧 Temporary Workarounds
Input Validation Enhancement
allAdd server-side validation to prevent user input from being processed as regular expressions in the user registration endpoint.
Modify AquilaCMS source code to sanitize and validate input before processing as regex
Rate Limiting Implementation
allImplement rate limiting on the 'Add a user' endpoint to prevent automated enumeration attempts.
Configure web server or application rate limiting for /add-user endpoint
🧯 If You Can't Patch
- Implement Web Application Firewall (WAF) rules to block suspicious patterns in user registration requests
- Disable or restrict access to the 'Add a user' functionality for unauthenticated users
🔍 How to Verify
Check if Vulnerable:
Test if submitting specially crafted input to the user registration endpoint returns information about existing email addresses.Check Version:
Check AquilaCMS version in admin panel or configuration filesVerify Fix Applied:
Verify that user registration endpoint no longer leaks information about existing email addresses when provided with regex patterns.📡 Detection & Monitoring
Log Indicators:
- Multiple failed user registration attempts with regex patterns
- Unusual patterns in user registration requests
Network Indicators:
- High volume of requests to user registration endpoint from single IP
- Requests containing regex special characters
SIEM Query:
source="web_logs" AND (uri_path="/add-user" OR uri_path="/register") AND (user_agent="*automated*" OR status_code=200) | stats count by src_ip