CVE-2023-40021CWE-203CWE-208

Timing Attack Reveals CSRF Tokens in oppia

Medium · published August 16, 2023

CVSS v3.1
5.3
EPSS
1%
Percentile
55.3
In the wild
Unconfirmed
What it is

Oppia is an online learning platform. When comparing a received CSRF token against the expected token, Oppia uses the string equality operator (`==`), which is not safe against timing attacks. By repeatedly submitting invalid tokens, an attacker can brute-force the expected CSRF token character by character. Once they have recovered the token, they can then submit a forged request on behalf of a logged-in user and execute privileged actions on that user's behalf. In particular the function to validate received CSRF tokens is at `oppia.core.controllers.base.CsrfTokenManager.is_csrf_token_valid`. An attacker who can lure a logged-in Oppia user to a malicious website can perform any change on Oppia that the user is authorized to do, including changing profile information; creating, deleting, and changing explorations; etc. Note that the attacker cannot change a user's login credentials. An attack would need to complete within 1 second because every second, the time used in computing the token changes. This issue has been addressed in commit `b89bf80837` which has been included in release `3.3.2-hotfix-2`. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.

The record
Technical detail
CVSS v3.1
5.3 · MEDIUM
Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
CVSS v4.0
Not supplied
EPSS
0.00774 · 55.3th percentile
Weaknesses
CWE-203 · Observable Discrepancy; CWE-208 · Observable Timing Discrepancy
Published
2023-08-16T20:25Z
EPSS history
Timeline
  • 16 AUG 20:25Z
    Timing Attack Reveals CSRF Tokens in oppia
    cvelistv5