Advisory: Awstats official workaround flaw 

RedTeam found a flaw in the official workaround for the remote command
execution vulnerability in awstats discovered by iDefense.

### Details

- Product: Awstats
- Affected Version: \<= 6.2
- Immune Version: 6.3
- OS affected: all
- Security-Risk: high
- Remote-Exploit: yes
- Vendor-URL: `http://awstats.sourceforge.net`
- Vendor-Status: informed
- Advisory-URL: `https://www.redteam-pentesting.de/advisories/rt-sa-2005-006`
- Advisory-Status: public
- CVE: GENERIC-MAP-NOMATCH
- (`https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=GENERIC-MAP-NOMATCH#`)

### Introduction

iDefense found a remote command execution vulnerability in awstats \<= 6.2,
see CAN-2005-0116.

The official awstats website tells users that they are safe from remote
command execution if they set the variable \$!AllowToUpdateStatsFromBrowser to
0. This is not true, as the exploit can still be triggered.

### More Details

In awstats.pl the variable \$configdir, which is used to exploit, can still be
set remotely. Setting \$!AllowToUpdateStatsFromBrowser to 0 only removes the
link to the button which can be used to trigger updates. The variable can
still be assigned per GET request.

### Proof of Concept

`http://path/to/awstats/awstats.pl?configdir=%7Ccd%20/tmp;%20touch%20evilfile`;

### Workaround

Use the workaround provided by iDefense. See their advisory for the original
vulnerability.

### Fix

Fixed in version 6.3.

### Security Risk

High, as arbitrary commands can be executed on the vulnerable system.

### History

- 2005-02-12 <eldy@users.sourceforge.net> informed
- 2005-02-12 CVE number requested
- 2005-02-14 issue does not qualify for a CVE number. posted.
- 2009-05-08 Updated Advisory URL

### RedTeam

RedTeam is a penetration testing group working at the Laboratory for
Dependable Distributed Systems at RWTH-Aachen University. You can find more
information on the RedTeam Project at
`https://www.redteam-pentesting.de`