In Znuny through 7.3.6, an attacker can bypass specific standard login procedures and gain unauthorized access to sensitive system functions by manipulating a specific HTTP request header

Overview

In Znuny through 7.3.6, an attacker can bypass specific standard login procedures and gain unauthorized access to sensitive system functions by manipulating a specific HTTP request header. Because the application incorrectly trusts this header, an attacker can impersonate any user, including administrators, without requiring a password. This grants full access to confidential data and system controls. More specifically, the HTTPBasicAuth modules for the agent (Kernel::System::Auth::HTTPBasicAuth) and customer (Kernel::System::CustomerAuth::HTTPBasicAuth) interfaces read the username to log in not only from $ENV{REMOTE_USER} (set by the web server after successful authentication), but also, as a fallback, from $ENV{HTTP_REMOTE_USER}, which is populated directly from an attacker-controllable "Remote-User" request header. On systems where HTTPBasicAuth was configured as the authentication backend, this allowed an attacker to log in as any existing user by sending a request with a forged Remote-User header, without providing any credentials.

Remediation

Refer to the linked advisories for vendor-supplied fixes and affected version ranges.