Burden 1.8 - Authentication Bypass

Advisory ID: HTB23192
Product: Burden
Vendor: Josh Fradley
Vulnerable Version(s): 1.8 and probably prior
Tested Version: 1.8
Advisory Publication:  December 18, 2013  [without technical details]
Vendor Notification: December 18, 2013 
Vendor Patch: December 18, 2013 
Public Disclosure: January 8, 2014 
Vulnerability Type: Improper Authentication [CWE-287]
CVE Reference: CVE-2013-7137
Risk Level: High 
CVSSv2 Base Score: 7.5 (AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P)
Solution Status: Fixed by Vendor
Discovered and Provided: High-Tech Bridge Security Research Lab ( https://www.htbridge.com/advisory/ ) 

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Advisory Details:

High-Tech Bridge Security Research Lab discovered vulnerability in application authentication mechanism in Burden, which can be exploited by remote non-authenticated attacker to gain administrative access to the vulnerable application.


1) Improper Authentication in Burden: CVE-2013-7137

The vulnerability exists due to insufficient authentication when handling "burden_user_rememberme" cookie parameter. A remote unauthenticated user can set "burden_user_rememberme" cookie to "1" and gain administrative access to the application. 

The exploitation example below shows HTTP GET request that grants administrative privileges to the user:


GET /login.php HTTP/1.1

Cookie: burden_user_rememberme=1;


The cookie can be also changed using a browser plugin such as Firebug for FireFox.

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Solution:

Update to Burden 1.8.1

More Information:
https://github.com/joshf/Burden/releases/tag/1.8.1

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References:

[1] High-Tech Bridge Advisory HTB23192 - https://www.htbridge.com/advisory/HTB23192 - Improper Authentication in Burden.
[2] Burden - https://github.com/joshf - Burden is a full featured task management app written in PHP.
[3] Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) - http://cve.mitre.org/ - international in scope and free for public use, CVE® is a dictionary of publicly known information security vulnerabilities and exposures.
[4] Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) - http://cwe.mitre.org - targeted to developers and security practitioners, CWE is a formal list of software weakness types.
[5] ImmuniWeb® - http://www.htbridge.com/immuniweb/ - is High-Tech Bridge's proprietary web application security assessment solution with SaaS delivery model that combines manual and automated vulnerability testing.

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Disclaimer: The information provided in this Advisory is provided "as is" and without any warranty of any kind. Details of this Advisory may be updated in order to provide as accurate information as possible. The latest version of the Advisory is available on web page [1] in the References.