cutenews 1.4.1 Arbitrary File Access 

Cute news is a powerful and easy for using news
management system that use flat files to store its
database.
It supports comments, archives, search function, image
uploading, backup function, IP banning, flood
protection ...
http://cutephp.com


Credit:
The information has been provided by Hamid Ebadi
( Hamid Network Security Team) : admin[AT]hamid[o]ir.
The original article can be found at :
http://hamid.ir/security


Input passed to the "archive" (POST,COOKIE,... method)
parameter in "inc/function.php" isn't properly
verified.
This can be exploited to access arbitrary files (like
users.db.php and config.php).

Vulnerable Systems:
cutenews 1.4.1 and below

Vulnerable Code:
The following lines in $cutepath/inc/functions.inc.php
on line 7

if( isset($_GET['archive']) and $_GET['archive'] != ""
and !eregi("^[_a-zA-Z0-9-]{1,}$", $_GET['archive'])){
die("invalid archive characters"); }

here you can see cutenews just filter 
$_GET['archive']  but they forgot $_POST['archive'],
$COOKIE['archive']! and in the rest of code they user
$archive instead of $_GET['archive'] !!!?
for example :

if($archive == ""){
        $news_file = "$cutepath/data/news.txt";
        $comm_file = "$cutepath/data/comments.txt";
}else{
        $news_file =
"$cutepath/data/archives/$archive.news.arch";
        $comm_file =
"$cutepath/data/archives/$archive.comments.arch";
}
...

Successful exploitation requires that
"register_globals" is enabled.


Path Disclosure :
if an attacker provides a filename which not exists,
the application will return some information about
path of cutenews on the server, like this:
Warning:
file([PATH]/cutenews/data/archives/hamid.news.arch):
failed to open stream: No such file or directory in
[PATH]\cutenews\inc\shows.inc.php on line 583

Unofficial Patch:
line 8 : inc/functions.inc.php 
if( isset($archive) and $archive != "" and
!eregi("^[_a-zA-Z0-9-]{1,}$", $archive)){ die("Patched
by Hamid Ebadi -->http://hamid.ir  ( Hamid Network
Security Team) "); }
if( isset($_REQUEST['archive']) and
$_REQUEST['archive'] != "" and
!eregi("^[_a-zA-Z0-9-]{1,}$", $_REQUEST['archive'])){
die("Patched by Hamid Ebadi -->http://hamid.ir  (
Hamid Network Security Team) "); }


Exploit:
http://hamid.ir/exploit/





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