CVE-2024-52008

Fides is an open-source privacy engineering platform. The user invite acceptance API endpoint lacks server-side password policy enforcement, allowing users to set arbitrarily weak passwords by bypassing client-side validation. While the UI enforces password complexity requirements, direct API calls can circumvent these checks, enabling the creation of accounts with passwords as short as a single character. When an email messaging provider is enabled and a new user account is created in the system, an invite email containing a special link is sent to the new users email address. This link directs the new user to a page where they can set their initial password. While the user interface implements password complexity checks, these validations are only performed client-side. The underlying /api/v1/user/accept-invite API endpoint does not implement the same password policy validations. This vulnerability allows an invited user to set an extremely weak password for their own account during the initial account setup process. Therefore that specific users account can be compromised easily by an attacker guessing or brute forcing the password. The vulnerability has been patched in Fides version 2.50.0. Users are advised to upgrade to this version or later to secure their systems against this threat. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.

Weakness

The product is composed of a server that relies on the client to implement a mechanism that is intended to protect the server.

Potential Mitigations

• For any security checks that are performed on the client side, ensure that these checks are duplicated on the server side. Attackers can bypass the client-side checks by modifying values after the checks have been performed, or by changing the client to remove the client-side checks entirely. Then, these modified values would be submitted to the server.
• Even though client-side checks provide minimal benefits with respect to server-side security, they are still useful. First, they can support intrusion detection. If the server receives input that should have been rejected by the client, then it may be an indication of an attack. Second, client-side error-checking can provide helpful feedback to the user about the expectations for valid input. Third, there may be a reduction in server-side processing time for accidental input errors, although this is typically a small savings.

Related Attack Patterns

• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/162.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/202.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/207.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/208.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/21.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/31.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/383.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/384.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/385.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/386.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/387.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/388.html

References

• https://github.com/ethyca/fides/security/advisories/GHSA-v7vm-rhmg-8j2r