The implementation of an internal and undocumented Dashboard API endpoint (POST /api/users/~/{user}/tokens) forgot to ensure an HTTP request for creating an API Token for another user had sufficient permission to do so.
Precondition for successful exploitation was a preexisting internal user (with more privileges than the attacker), the attacker knowing its login name and the attacker being able to authenticate to the Dashboard via OAuth/OIDC. The attacker would then have had to forge a token creation API request on behalf of the other user and could have authenticated and finalized the token creation with their own OAuth/OIDC credentials. In the worst case, this would mean an attacker could have become Dashboard Administrator and been able to perform all administrative actions if the preexisting internal user had administrative privileges. In combination with a separate weakness, this could have further led to code execution on the host system running the Dashboard with the privileges of the OS-User running the Dashboard server.
Weakness
The product does not perform an authorization check when an actor attempts to access a resource or perform an action.
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.