This article is a part of our Vulnerability Database (back to index)
Cross-Site Request Forgery occurrences in Mailman
In GNU Mailman before 2.1.38, a list member or moderator can get a CSRF token and craft an admin request (using that token) to set a new admin password or make other changes. (2021-12-02, CVE-2021-44227)
GNU Mailman before 2.1.35 may allow remote Privilege Escalation. A csrf_token value is not specific to a single user account. An attacker can obtain a value within the context of an unprivileged user account, and then use that value in a CSRF attack against an admin (e.g., for account takeover). (2021-10-21, CVE-2021-42097)
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.