Vulnerability Note VU#314347

phpBB does not adequately validate user input thereby allowing user to gain escalated privileges via manipulated SQL query

Overview

phpBB is an open-source bulletin board program. There exists a user input validation problem with regard to the parsing of the URL. An intruder can excute limited SQL queries and gain administrative privileges on the bulletin board.

I. Description

phpBB has a user input validation problem that can lead to the execution of limited SQL queries and administrative privileges on the bulletin board. There is an algorithm (in auth.php) to remove backslash characters from the URL. Because the backslash charcters were removed, php variables may have unescaped quotes, allowing the attacker to pass these variables to an sql query in another file. For example, prefs.php is one file exploitable by this vulnerability. The intruder can register for an account on the bulletin board and then enter a specially crafted URL to exploit this vulnerability and gain administrative rights on the bulletin board.

II. Impact

An intruder can gain administrative privileges to the bulletin board.

III. Solution

The CERT/CC is currently unaware of a practical solution to this problem.

Systems Affected

Vendor	Status	Date Notified	Date Updated
PHPBB	Vulnerable	17-Sep-2001

References

http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/3142

Credit

This vulnerability was discovered by kill-9 <kill-9@modernhackers.com>.

This document was written by Jason Rafail.

Other Information

Date Public:	2001-08-03
Date First Published:	2001-09-17
Date Last Updated:	2001-09-17
CERT Advisory:
CVE-ID(s):
NVD-ID(s):
US-CERT Technical Alerts:
Metric:	20.25
Document Revision:	7

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