This article is a part of our Vulnerability Database (back to index)
Cross-Site Request Forgery occurrences in Layerbb
LayerBB before 1.1.4 has multiple CSRF issues, as demonstrated by changing the System Settings via admin/general.php. (2019-09-20, CVE-2019-16531)
LayerBB 1.1.3 allows conversations.php/cmd/new CSRF. (2019-07-19, CVE-2019-13974)
LayerBB before 1.1.3 allows CSRF for adding a user via admin/new_user.php, deleting a user via admin/members.php/delete_user/, and deleting content via mod/delete.php/. (2019-03-21, CVE-2018-17996)
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.