CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2023-32677

Missing Authorization

Published: May 19, 2023 | Modified: May 26, 2023
CVSS 3.x
3.1
LOW
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N
CVSS 2.x
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu

Zulip is an open-source team collaboration tool with unique topic-based threading. Zulip administrators can configure Zulip to limit who can add users to streams, and separately to limit who can invite users to the organization. In Zulip Server 6.1 and below, the UI which allows a user to invite a new user also allows them to set the streams that the new user is invited to – even if the inviting user would not have permissions to add an existing user to streams. While such a configuration is likely rare in practice, the behavior does violate security-related controls. This does not let a user invite new users to streams they cannot see, or would not be able to add users to if they had that general permission. This issue has been addressed in version 6.2. Users are advised to upgrade. Users unable to upgrade may limit sending of invitations down to users who also have the permission to add users to streams.

Weakness

The product does not perform an authorization check when an actor attempts to access a resource or perform an action.

Affected Software

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Zulip Zulip * *

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 not 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