On this long-read post, we will take a deep dive into the newly discovered CVE-2024-10452 vulnerability that affects a widespread number of online systems in which organization administrators hold privileges to manage membership invitations. This highly critical vulnerability enables an organization admin to delete pending invites, even when they do not belong to or hold any administrative rights within the target organization.

This post will comprehensively cover the following topics

• Technical details of the vulnerability
• Code snippets demonstrating the exploitation
• Original references and public disclosures
• Possible risk scenarios
• Exploit analysis
• Recommended mitigation steps

Technical Details of the Vulnerability

The CVE-2024-10452 vulnerability arises due to the improper validation of administrative permissions in the system. This potentially allows organization admins to perform unauthorized invite deletion actions in completely unrelated organizations.

The technical details of this vulnerability stem from the fact that when an organization admin sends a request to delete a pending invite, the system only checks if the user has organization admin privilege but fails to verify if they are indeed an admin of the target organization.

Code Snippets Demonstrating the Exploitation

To demonstrate the exploitation of this vulnerability, here is a code snippet that sends a delete request to the vulnerable system:

import requests

target_organization_id = 'ABC123'
invite_id_to_delete = 'INVITE_XYZ'

session = requests.Session()
session.headers.update({'Authorization': 'YOUR_AUTH_TOKEN'})

delete_url = f'https://vulnerable-system.com/organizations/{target_organization_id}/invites/{invite_id_to_delete}';
response = session.delete(delete_url)

print(response.status_code)
print(response.text)

The code snippet above is a simple Python script that sends an HTTP DELETE request to the vulnerable system's API endpoint for deleting the specified invite. The target_organization_id and invite_id_to_delete variables represent the target organization and invite that an attacker would want to delete, respectively. However, lack of proper organization validation in the backend enables the intruder to successfully delete a pending invite even when they are not part of the target organization.

Original References and Public Disclosures

• This vulnerability was originally disclosed by [Jane Doe] in a GitHub Issue on [January 10, 2024].
• Official CVE entry
• National Vulnerability Database entry

There are multiple risk scenarios that arise from this vulnerability, including but not limited to

- Unauthorized deletion of pending invites in different organizations, causing disruption in those organizations' onboarding processes
- Attacks to mass-delete pending invites, resulting in a denial-of-service condition for organizations that rely on invitation-based membership management
- Deletion might be exploited in conjunction with other vulnerabilities, such as privilege escalation, to gain unauthorized access to sensitive data within organizations

Exploit Analysis

The exploitation of this vulnerability is relatively simple, requiring only minimal knowledge of coding and the vulnerable system's API endpoints. The potential impact, however, could be widespread and significant, disrupting the day-to-day operations of various organizations using the affected system.

The underlying issue is the improper validation of administrative privileges while deleting pending invites. To mitigate this vulnerability and protect the system from related attacks, organizations and system administrators should:

1. Apply proper permission checks and validate users' administrative roles against the target organization before allowing the deletion of pending invites.

Maintain reliable logs of API access and closely monitor them for any suspicious activities.

4. Train organization administrators to use strong authentication methods and be aware of social engineering attacks.

In conclusion, the CVE-2024-10452 vulnerability represents a significant security risk for organization membership management systems. Organizations and administrators must carefully assess their systems for the presence of this vulnerability and take prompt action in implementing appropriate patches, permission validation, and monitoring to prevent unauthorized deletions of pending invites.

Timeline

Published on: 10/29/2024 16:15:04 UTC