• Home
  • Cyber Crime
  • Cyber warfare
  • APT
  • Data Breach
  • Deep Web
  • Digital ID
  • Hacking
  • Hacktivism
  • Intelligence
  • Internet of Things
  • Laws and regulations
  • Malware
  • Mobile
  • Reports
  • Security
  • Social Networks
  • Terrorism
  • ICS-SCADA
  • POLICIES
  • Contact me
MUST READ

SECURITY AFFAIRS MALWARE NEWSLETTER ROUND 55

 | 

Security Affairs newsletter Round 534 by Pierluigi Paganini – INTERNATIONAL EDITION

 | 

Law enforcement operations seized BlackSuit ransomware gang’s darknet sites

 | 

Arizona woman sentenced for aiding North Korea in U.S. IT job fraud scheme

 | 

Operation CargoTalon targets Russia’s aerospace with EAGLET malware,

 | 

Unpatched flaw in EoL LG LNV5110R cameras lets hackers gain Admin access

 | 

Koske, a new AI-Generated Linux malware appears in the threat landscape

 | 

Mitel patches critical MiVoice MX-ONE Auth bypass flaw

 | 

Coyote malware is first-ever malware abusing Windows UI Automation

 | 

SonicWall fixed critical flaw in SMA 100 devices exploited in Overstep malware attacks

 | 

DSPM & AI Are Booming: $17.87B and $4.8T Markets by 2033

 | 

Stealth backdoor found in WordPress mu-Plugins folder

 | 

U.S. CISA adds CrushFTP, Google Chromium, and SysAid flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog

 | 

U.S. CISA urges FCEB agencies to fix two Microsoft SharePoint flaws immediately and added them to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog

 | 

Sophos fixed two critical Sophos Firewall vulnerabilities

 | 

French Authorities confirm XSS.is admin arrested in Ukraine

 | 

Microsoft linked attacks on SharePoint flaws to China-nexus actors

 | 

Cisco confirms active exploitation of ISE and ISE-PIC flaws

 | 

SharePoint under fire: new ToolShell attacks target enterprises

 | 

CrushFTP zero-day actively exploited at least since July 18

 | 
  • Home
  • Cyber Crime
  • Cyber warfare
  • APT
  • Data Breach
  • Deep Web
  • Digital ID
  • Hacking
  • Hacktivism
  • Intelligence
  • Internet of Things
  • Laws and regulations
  • Malware
  • Mobile
  • Reports
  • Security
  • Social Networks
  • Terrorism
  • ICS-SCADA
  • POLICIES
  • Contact me
  • Home
  • Breaking News
  • Hacking
  • Ghost blogging platform affected by multiple vulnerabilities

Ghost blogging platform affected by multiple vulnerabilities

Pierluigi Paganini March 23, 2015

A group of researchers from Voidsec have found six vulnerabilities in the Ghost blogging platform that allow privilege editing and DoS.

Six vulnerabilities have been found affecting Ghost, the blogging platform coded in the Node.js born on October 2013. These vulnerability were discovered on January 26 by a group of researcher from Voidsec (voidsec, bughardy and smaury) during a web application penetration test. The researchers promtly reported the security vulnerability to the Ghost team, which has fixed some of them.

The team found stored XSS, privilege reduction, privilege bypass, article author spoofing, DoS by the mean of resource consumption and an unsafe token storage policy. An attacker could exploit these vulnerabilities to perform privilege escalation/reduction and account take over resulting in the consequently hack the whole blogging platform. The attacker can block the legitimete administrator to use the service and potentially the whole platform hosting the website powered by Ghost.

ghost blogging platform security issue

The first of these issues is composed by a set of three stored XSS which can lead to session hijacking. Those XSS were triggerable by any user on the blog and were found in blog’s logo and cover, users’ avatar and cover and in the tag manager.

The DoS vulnerability allows an attacker to create a malfunction in the targeted server, since there were no control over the size or the number of avatars uploaded by users.

“In our case instead the vulnerability is within the application, and it can lead to a server crash.”

There were found various issues related to privilege management that can create great instability of the blogging platform. Due to a wrong check in the code of Ghost any user can reduce privilege of any other one, administrators and moderators included and in the meanwhile taking control of that account. Another hole in the platform also allows any user to read everybody private drafts, which are private; that flaw is still not fixed at time I’m writing. The last privilege issue is an escalation one, which take the form of author spoofing in any article entry newly created; there are various applications of an attack of that form of  creation of the undeletable post to social engineering.

“The post will be published, the blog’s readers will see it as the Owner wrote and published it but since we set a non-existing user as author, this non-existing user is the real owner of the post blog, so only him is able to delete/edit the post” bughardy wrote in a blog post.

The last vulnerability affects the way sensitive data are stored, Bearer token is not stored in a cookie with the HttpOnly flag, but it is kept in the localStorage of the browser, so any XSS, like the one described above can lead to session hijacking.

Moreover, the team pointed out another two potential vulnerabilities one affecting Ghost platform and one affecting bcryptCompare function. The first one is another XSS through javascript injection within articles, but the team was not sure if it is a feature that the Ghost team want to keep or will be replaced or removed in the future. The second one is a timing attack on the function that check if the hash of the password is the same as the one stored into the database.

Luckily most of those vulnerabilities has been fixed by Ghost team, a detailed report is available at voidsec.com.

Written by kalup and Voidsec

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs –  Ghost blogging platform, hacking)


facebook linkedin twitter

blog Denial of Service DOS Ghost blogging platform Hacking XSS

you might also like

Pierluigi Paganini July 27, 2025
SECURITY AFFAIRS MALWARE NEWSLETTER ROUND 55
Read more
Pierluigi Paganini July 27, 2025
Security Affairs newsletter Round 534 by Pierluigi Paganini – INTERNATIONAL EDITION
Read more

leave a comment

newsletter

Subscribe to my email list and stay
up-to-date!

    recent articles

    SECURITY AFFAIRS MALWARE NEWSLETTER ROUND 55

    Malware / July 27, 2025

    Security Affairs newsletter Round 534 by Pierluigi Paganini – INTERNATIONAL EDITION

    Breaking News / July 27, 2025

    Law enforcement operations seized BlackSuit ransomware gang’s darknet sites

    Cyber Crime / July 26, 2025

    Arizona woman sentenced for aiding North Korea in U.S. IT job fraud scheme

    Intelligence / July 26, 2025

    Operation CargoTalon targets Russia’s aerospace with EAGLET malware,

    Intelligence / July 25, 2025

    To contact me write an email to:

    Pierluigi Paganini :
    pierluigi.paganini@securityaffairs.co

    LEARN MORE

    QUICK LINKS

    • Home
    • Cyber Crime
    • Cyber warfare
    • APT
    • Data Breach
    • Deep Web
    • Digital ID
    • Hacking
    • Hacktivism
    • Intelligence
    • Internet of Things
    • Laws and regulations
    • Malware
    • Mobile
    • Reports
    • Security
    • Social Networks
    • Terrorism
    • ICS-SCADA
    • POLICIES
    • Contact me

    Copyright@securityaffairs 2024

    We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept All”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. However, you may visit "Cookie Settings" to provide a controlled consent.
    Cookie SettingsAccept All
    Manage consent

    Privacy Overview

    This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities...
    Necessary
    Always Enabled
    Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
    Non-necessary
    Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
    SAVE & ACCEPT