CVE-2020-15278

Red Discord Bot before version 3.4.1 has an unauthorized privilege escalation exploit in the Mod module. This exploit allows Discord users with a high privilege level within the guild to bypass hierarchy checks when the application is in a specific condition that is beyond that users control. By abusing this exploit, it is possible to perform destructive actions within the guild the user has high privileges in. This exploit has been fixed in version 3.4.1. As a workaround, unloading the Mod module with unload mod or, disabling the massban command with command disable global massban can render this exploit not accessible. We still highly recommend updating to 3.4.1 to completely patch this issue.

Weakness

The product performs an authorization check when an actor attempts to access a resource or perform an action, but it does not correctly perform the check. This allows attackers to bypass intended access restrictions.

Affected Software

Extended Description

Assuming a user with a given identity, authorization is the process of determining whether that user can access a given resource, based on the user’s privileges and any permissions or other access-control specifications that apply to the resource. When access control checks are incorrectly applied, users are able to access data or perform actions that they should not be allowed to perform. This can lead to a wide range of problems, including information exposures, denial of service, and arbitrary code execution.

Potential Mitigations

• Divide the product into anonymous, normal, privileged, and administrative areas. Reduce the attack surface by carefully mapping roles with data and functionality. Use role-based access control (RBAC) [REF-229] to enforce the roles at the appropriate boundaries.
• Note that this approach may not protect against horizontal authorization, i.e., it will not protect a user from attacking others with the same role.
• Use a vetted library or framework that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid.
• For example, consider using authorization frameworks such as the JAAS Authorization Framework [REF-233] and the OWASP ESAPI Access Control feature [REF-45].
• For web applications, make sure that the access control mechanism is enforced correctly at the server side on every page. Users should not be able to access any unauthorized functionality or information by simply requesting direct access to that page.
• One way to do this is to ensure that all pages containing sensitive information are not cached, and that all such pages restrict access to requests that are accompanied by an active and authenticated session token associated with a user who has the required permissions to access that page.

References

• https://github.com/Cog-Creators/Red-DiscordBot/commit/726bfd38adfdfaef760412a68e01447b470f438b
• https://github.com/Cog-Creators/Red-DiscordBot/releases/tag/3.4.1
• https://github.com/Cog-Creators/Red-DiscordBot/security/advisories/GHSA-mp9m-g7qj-6vqr