ID: IRCNE2014032130
Date: 2013-03-12
According to "computerworld", recently released security updates for the popular Joomla content management system (CMS) address a SQL injection vulnerability that poses a high risk and can be exploited to extract information from the databases of Joomla-based sites.
The Joomla Project released versions 3.2.3 and 2.5.19 of the open-source CMS on Thursday. Both updates address two cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities in core components, but version 3.2.3 also patches a SQL injection flaw, publicly disclosed in early February, and an unauthorized log-in flaw in the Gmail-based authentication plug-in.
The Joomla advisory for the SQL injection vulnerability is lacking technical details. It only notes that the flaw, whose severity is rated as high, stems from "inadequate escaping" and affects Joomla CMS versions 3.1.0 through 3.2.2.
Successful exploitation of this vulnerability requires the affected site to use the Similar Tags module, researchers from vulnerability intelligence firm Secunia said in a security advisory. According to the official Joomla documentation, Similar Tags is one of the modules shipped by default with the CMS.
SQL injection is one of the most common types of flaws exploited by attackers to compromise websites. Depending on their specific technical details, these vulnerabilities allow attackers to inject rogue code into sites or steal sensitive data from their databases.
The SQL injection vulnerability recently patched by Joomla does not appear to allow code injection, just the manipulation of SELECT calls to extract information from the database, including user names and password hashes, Cid said.
The bug in the Gmail-based authentication plugin is also scary, according to Cid. That plug-in allows users to authenticate on Joomla sites using their Gmail addresses and passwords instead of creating separate accounts.
It's not clear how many Joomla-based websites are on the Internet, but according to statistics from W3Techs, a service that gathers data about the use of various Web technologies, Joomla is the second most popular CMS after WordPress. The W3Techs data also shows that only around 8 percent of Joomla sites use 3.x versions of the software, while over 50 percent still use 1.x versions that are no longer supported.
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