Overview
A critical Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability, identified as CVE-2025-59112, has been discovered in Windu CMS. This vulnerability allows a malicious attacker to craft a specially designed website that, when visited by an authenticated Windu CMS user, can silently trigger the deletion of a specified user account without the user’s knowledge or consent. This could lead to significant disruption of service and unauthorized access.
While the vendor was notified, there has been no public response regarding vulnerable versions or planned fixes. Our testing has confirmed the vulnerability exists in version 4.1. Other versions may also be affected but remain unconfirmed.
Technical Details
The vulnerability resides within the user editing functionality of Windu CMS. Specifically, the application does not properly validate the origin of requests to delete user accounts. An attacker can exploit this by embedding a malicious form within their own website. This form, when loaded in a victim’s browser (while they are logged into Windu CMS), will automatically submit a POST request to the Windu CMS server to delete a targeted user. Because the request originates from the victim’s authenticated session, the server mistakenly assumes it’s a legitimate action.
The crafted HTML could contain the following structure:
<form action="[Windu CMS URL]/admin/users/delete" method="POST">
<input type="hidden" name="user_id" value="[User ID to delete]">
<input type="submit" value="Delete User" style="display:none;">
</form>
<script>
document.forms[0].submit();
</script>
CVSS Analysis
Due to the vendor’s lack of response and the absence of a provided score, a proper CVSS score cannot be officially calculated. However, given the potential for significant impact, a preliminary assessment suggests a High severity is likely. The lack of user interaction required after initial page load drastically increases the exploitability.
Possible Impact
The impact of this vulnerability could be severe. A successful exploit could lead to:
- Unauthorized User Deletion: Attackers can delete administrative accounts, effectively locking administrators out of their own systems.
- Data Loss: The deleted user accounts may be associated with important data, potentially resulting in data loss.
- Website Defacement: With administrative access compromised, attackers could deface the website or inject malicious code.
- Denial of Service: Deleting numerous user accounts can disrupt the functionality of the Windu CMS, leading to a denial-of-service situation.
Mitigation and Patch Steps
Since the vendor hasn’t released a patch, the following mitigation strategies are recommended:
- Implement CSRF Protection: Modify the Windu CMS code to include CSRF tokens for all sensitive operations, particularly user deletion. This would involve adding a unique, unpredictable token to each request that needs to be validated on the server side.
- Referer Header Checking: Implement server-side checks to verify that the Referer header of the request matches the expected origin of the Windu CMS installation. Note that this is not a foolproof solution as the Referer header can be spoofed, but it adds an additional layer of security.
- User Awareness: Educate users to be cautious about clicking on links from untrusted sources or visiting unfamiliar websites while logged into their Windu CMS accounts.
- Consider Alternative CMS: If the vendor remains unresponsive and a patch is not forthcoming, consider migrating to a more actively maintained and security-conscious CMS.
- Web Application Firewall (WAF): Deploy a Web Application Firewall (WAF) and configure it to block requests that appear to be CSRF attacks targeting the user deletion functionality.
Important Note: Modifying core CMS code requires advanced technical expertise and should be performed with caution. Ensure you have backups before making any changes.
