This article is a part of our Vulnerability Database (back to index)
Cross-Site Request Forgery occurrences in Openemr
A cross-site request forgery vulnerability exists in the GACL functionality of OpenEMR 5.0.2 and development version 6.0.0 (commit babec93f600ff1394f91ccd512bcad85832eb6ce). A specially crafted HTTP request can lead to the execution of arbitrary requests in the context of the victim. An attacker can send an HTTP request to trigger this vulnerability. (2021-01-28, CVE-2020-13569)
OpenEMR 5.0.1.3 allows Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) via library/ajax and interface/super, as demonstrated by use of interface/super/manage_site_files.php to upload a .php file. (2020-12-31, CVE-2018-16795)
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.