This article is a part of our Vulnerability Database (back to index)
Cross-Site Request Forgery occurrences in Empirecms
EmpireCMS 7.5.0 has XSS via the from parameter to e/member/doaction.php, as demonstrated by a CSRF payload that changes the dynamic page template. The attacker can choose to resend the e/template/member/regsend.php registered activation mail page. (2019-05-27, CVE-2019-12361)
EmpireCMS 7.5 allows CSRF for adding a user account via an enews=AddUser action to e/admin/user/ListUser.php, a similar issue to CVE-2018-16339. (2019-03-07, CVE-2018-18449)
An issue was discovered in EmpireCMS 7.0. There is a CSRF vulnerability that can add administrators via upload/e/admin/user/AddUser.php?enews=AddUser. (2018-09-02, CVE-2018-16339)
Why Cross-Site Request Forgery can be dangerous
The absence of Anti-CSRF tokens may lead to a Cross-Site Request Forgery attack that can result in executing a specific application action as another logged in user, e.g. steal their account by changing their email and password or silently adding a new admin user account when executed from the administrator account.
The attacker may copy one of your web application forms, e.g. email/password change form.
The webpage will contain a form with the exact set of fields as the original application but with input values already provided and the submit button replaced with a Javascript code causing auto-submission. When the page is accessed the form will be immediately submitted and page contents replaced with a valid content or a redirect to your original application.
One of your application users who is already logged in can be then tricked to navigate to such malicious page e.g. by clicking a link in a phishing email, and the pre-populated form content will be submitted to your application like it would be submitted by your user.