phpBB 2.06 search.php SQL injection
Hello bugtraq readers,
A vulnerability exists in phpBB 2.06 that could allow an attacker to manipulate
SQL
queries and gain administrative control over the forum.
The search.php script of the application does not sufficiently sanitize the
input of the
"search_id" parameter. As a result of this an attacker could manipulate the SQL
query the script performs and potentially extract information such as password
hashes from the database.
Impact
-----------
The impact depends on the database solution in use. When testing the bug with
MySQL 4 on Apache 2 with PHP4, I was able to obtain my board administrator MD5
password hash. Armed with this hash an attacker could modify his cookie
accordingly
and log in as administrator without having to decode the hash. The attacker
would
then have complete control over the board and could execute other SQL queries
from
the admin panel.
Patch
-----------
I notified the the phpBB 2.06 developers and they have patched the script.
phpBB
users should download the latest 2.06 version from http://www.phpbb.com
A way to manually fix the issue can be found here:
http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=153818
A simple way to test if the bug is patched is:
http://your_site/phpBB2/search.php?search_id=1\
If patched, this should return the message "No topics or posts met your search
criteria". If unpatched you will get an SQL error (or just a general error if
DEBUG
mode is off).
Cheers,
Niels Teusink
www.teusink.net