Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2002 08:47:27 +0200
From: Jeroen Latour <[email protected]>
To: Bugtraq <[email protected]>
Subject: [Mantis Advisory/2002-01] SQL poisoning vulnerability in Mantis
[Mantis Advisory/2002-01] SQL poisoning vulnerability in Mantis
0. Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Summary / Impact analysis
3. Affected versions
4. Workaround / Solution
5. Detailed explanation
6. Contact details
1. Introduction
Mantis is an Open Source web-based bugtracking system, written in PHP,
which uses the MySQL database server. It is being actively developed by a
small group of developers, and is considered to be in the beta stage.
In response to the increased number of users and to the increasing number
of discovered security vulnerabilities, the Mantis team has decided to
start releasing advisories for all vulnerabilities in versions higher than
0.17.0. This is the first in a series of advisories which cover the
previously discovered vulnerabilities in greater detail.
2. Summary / Impact analysis
Older versions of Mantis do not check all user input, especially if they do
not come directly from form fields. This opens up a wide variety of SQL
poisoning vulnerabilities on systems without magic_quotes_gpc enabled. Most
of these vulnerabilities are only exploitable in a limited manner, since it
is no longer possible to execute multiple queries using one call to
mysql_query().
There is one query which can be tricked into changing an account's access
level, which means that a malicious user, with an account on the Mantis
installation, can make himself (m/f) an administrator of that Mantis
installation. This particular vulnerability has been fixed in version 0.17.3.
Note: Other vulnerabilities, caused by the same lack of input checking, may
exist!
3. Affected versions
The following versions are known to be affected:
Mantis 0.17.2
The following versions are known to be unaffected:
Mantis 0.17.4a (*)
Mantis 0.17.4 (*)
Mantis 0.17.3 (*)
The following versions are presumed to be affected:
All versions below Mantis 0.17.2
* = But read the note in section 2.
4. Workaround / Solution
Mantis 0.17.3 fixes the exploitable query mentioned in section 2.
All users are recommended to upgrade to the latest version, currently 0.17.4.
Since this vulnerability was discovered, coding guidelines have been
changed to ensure that every bit of user input that is fed to SQL queries
is either validated or escaped. Unfortunately, these changes came too late
to be released with Mantis 0.17.3. They have been fixed in CVS, and will be
corrected in 0.18.0.
Users who prefer security over using a tested version are encouraged to use
the CVS version. 0.18.0 is currently being wrapped up, but the release may
take a few weeks.
If an upgrade is not possible, Mantis 0.17.2 (and possibly lower) can be
patched to secure the exploitable query:
In account_update.php, insert the following lines somewhere in a PHP
block before the SQL queries are executed:
$f_username = addslashes($f_username);
$f_email = addslashes($f_email);
Enabling magic_quotes_gpc in your PHP configuration will also prevent the
problem from being exploitable.
5. Detailed explanation
By modifying the username or the email of a Mantis account, it is possible
to change any column of the Mantis user table (mantis_user_table by default).
This can be done by inserting quotes in the username or email and crafting
the value in such a manner that a valid SQL query results.
For example:
- The email can be set to: user@server', access_level=90, email='
- The normal query is:
UPDATE mantis_user_table
SET username='$f_username', email='$f_email'
WHERE id='$f_id'
- With the specified value for the email field, this becomes:
UPDATE mantis_user_table
SET username='someusername', email='user@server', access_level=90,
email=''
WHERE id='$f_id'
- This set the access_level column to a value of 90, the internal value
for Administrator.
6. Contact details
The latest version of Mantis is always available from:
http://mantisbt.sourceforge.net/
The current version is 0.17.4a, which can be downloaded from
http://mantisbt.sourceforge.net/download.php3
If you have any questions about this vulnerability, or wish to report
another, you can contact the developers at:
mailto:[email protected]
This is a private mailinglist, readable only by a few developers.
The latest version of this and other advisories can be found at:
http://mantisbt.sourceforge.net/security.php3
