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Symfony Cross-Site Request Forgery vulnerability in the Web Profiler

High severity GitHub Reviewed Published May 30, 2024 to the GitHub Advisory Database • Updated May 30, 2024

Package

composer symfony/symfony (Composer)

Affected versions

>= 2.0.0, < 2.3.19
>= 2.4.0, < 2.4.9
>= 2.5.0, < 2.5.4

Patched versions

2.3.19
2.4.9
2.5.4
composer symfony/web-profiler-bundle (Composer)
>= 2.0.0, < 2.3.19
>= 2.4.0, < 2.4.9
>= 2.5.0, < 2.5.4
2.3.19
2.4.9
2.5.4

Description

All 2.0.X, 2.1.X, 2.2.X, 2.3.X, 2.4.X, and 2.5.X versions of the Symfony WebProfiler bundle are affected by this security issue.

This issue has been fixed in Symfony 2.3.19, 2.4.9, and 2.5.4. Note that no fixes are provided for Symfony 2.0, 2.1, and 2.2 as they are not maintained anymore.

Description

The Symfony Web Profiler is a great development tool, but it should not be enabled on production servers. If it is enabled in production, it must be properly secured so that only authorized people have access to it. Developers must be very cautious about this as the Web Profiler gives many sensitive information about a Symfony project and any attackers can exploit many of them. Just to name a few sensitive information: user logins, user cookies, executed SQL statements, ...

That being said, the import/export feature of the web profiler is exploitable even if the Web Profiler is secured as the form to import a profiler is not protected against CSRF attacks. Combined with the fact that profiles are imported as a PHP serialized string, it makes your application vulnerable to code injection.

Resolution

As the import/export feature of the Web Profiler is not that useful, and because PHP serialize/unserialize functions have a long history of vulnerabilities, I decided to remove this feature from the Web interface and move it as CLI commands.

If you were relying on this feature, you now need to use the profiler:import and profiler:export Symfony commands provided by the WebProfiler bundle from the command line interface.

Those commands are not enabled by default and must be activated explicitly. For Symfony 2.4+, you can import them in your app/config.yml configuration file:

import:
   - { resource: "%kernel.root_dir%/../vendor/symfony/symfony/src/Symfony/Bundle/WebProfilerBundle/Resources/config/commands.xml" }

For Symfony 2.3, you can use the following snippet of code in app/console:

$kernel = new AppKernel($env, $debug);
$application = new Application($kernel);
if ($kernel->getContainer()->has('profiler')) {
    $profiler = $kernel->getContainer()->get('profiler');
    $application->add(new ImportCommand($profiler));
    $application->add(new ExportCommand($profiler));
}
$application->run($input);

At this point, I want to reiterate that you should never enable the Symfony Web Profiler on your production servers as this is a development tool. And if you need to enable it, double-check that it is properly secured.

The patch for this issue is available here: symfony/symfony#11832

References

Published to the GitHub Advisory Database May 30, 2024
Reviewed May 30, 2024
Last updated May 30, 2024

Severity

High

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
High
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Weaknesses

CVE ID

CVE-2014-6072

GHSA ID

GHSA-v35g-4rrw-h4fw

Source code

No known source code
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