Overview
CVE-2025-55057 describes a medium-severity vulnerability affecting web applications susceptible to Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF). This vulnerability allows an attacker to trick a user into performing actions on a web application without their knowledge or consent. By exploiting this weakness, malicious actors can potentially modify user data, change account settings, or perform other unauthorized actions, depending on the application’s functionality.
Published on 2025-11-17T18:15:57.390, it’s crucial to understand the details of this vulnerability and implement appropriate mitigation strategies to protect your web applications.
Technical Details
This CSRF vulnerability (CWE-352) arises because the web application does not properly validate the origin of requests. Specifically, the application fails to implement sufficient anti-CSRF protection mechanisms, such as:
- Missing or improperly implemented CSRF tokens.
- Lack of proper SameSite cookie attributes for sensitive operations.
- Insufficient validation of HTTP Referer or Origin headers.
An attacker can exploit this by crafting a malicious HTML page or email containing a request that appears to originate from the legitimate user. When the user, who is already authenticated with the application, visits the malicious page, their browser automatically sends the forged request to the vulnerable application. Since the application doesn’t properly verify the request’s origin, it executes the attacker’s intended action as if it were a legitimate user action.
CVSS Analysis
The Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) provides a standardized way to assess the severity of vulnerabilities. CVE-2025-55057 has a CVSS score of 4.5 (MEDIUM). This score reflects the following characteristics:
- Attack Vector (AV): Network (N) – The attack can be launched remotely over the network.
- Attack Complexity (AC): Low (L) – The attack requires little to no specialized knowledge or access.
- Privileges Required (PR): None (N) – The attacker does not require any privileges on the system to exploit the vulnerability.
- User Interaction (UI): Required (R) – The attack requires user interaction, such as clicking a link or visiting a malicious website.
- Scope (S): Unchanged (U) – The vulnerability affects the confidentiality, integrity, and/or availability of resources managed by the same security authority.
- Confidentiality Impact (C): None (N)
- Integrity Impact (I): Low (L)
- Availability Impact (A): None (N)
While the severity is rated as medium, the impact can be significant depending on the functionality of the vulnerable application. An attacker might be able to change a user’s email address, password, or even initiate financial transactions on their behalf.
Possible Impact
The successful exploitation of CVE-2025-55057 can have several negative consequences:
- Account Compromise: Attackers can potentially gain control of user accounts by changing passwords or email addresses.
- Data Manipulation: Sensitive user data could be modified or deleted without their consent.
- Unauthorized Actions: Attackers can perform actions on behalf of the user, such as making purchases or transferring funds.
- Reputation Damage: A successful CSRF attack can damage the reputation of the organization hosting the vulnerable application.
Mitigation and Patch Steps
To mitigate the risk of CVE-2025-55057, the following steps should be taken:
- Implement CSRF Tokens: Use strong, unique, and unpredictable CSRF tokens for all state-changing requests. These tokens should be validated on the server-side.
- Use SameSite Cookies: Set the
SameSiteattribute for cookies toStrictorLaxto prevent cross-site request forgery attacks. Use `Strict` for the most sensitive cookies. - Validate Origin and Referer Headers: While not a foolproof solution, validate the
OriginandRefererheaders to ensure that requests are originating from the expected domain. - User Education: Educate users about the risks of clicking suspicious links or opening attachments from untrusted sources.
- Regular Security Audits: Conduct regular security audits and penetration testing to identify and address potential vulnerabilities.
- Framework Updates: Ensure that the web application framework and libraries are up-to-date with the latest security patches. Often, frameworks provide built-in CSRF protection mechanisms that should be enabled and configured correctly.
