CVE-2024-56883

Executive Summary

CVE-2024-56883 is an Incorrect Access Control vulnerability in Sage DPW (Digital Payroll Web) prior to version 2024_12_001. The vulnerability allows a low-privileged user with the "employee" role to create external courses for other employees, a privilege that should be restricted to higher-level roles. The root cause is that role-based access controls (RBAC) are not consistently enforced on the server side. An attacker can exploit this by intercepting a valid course creation request and modifying the id parameter to target another user. This vulnerability has a CVSS score of 0.0 (unscored) but represents a significant privilege escalation and data integrity risk.

Supply Chain & Package Security

This vulnerability is not related to an open-source package manager (NPM, PyPI, Go, Ruby). It is a proprietary enterprise application (Sage DPW). No supply chain compromise is involved.

CVSS Breakdown & Threat Level

• CVSS Score: 0.0 (Unscored by NVD)
• Vector: UNKNOWN
• Attack Vector (AV): Network (likely)
• Attack Complexity (AC): Low (simple parameter modification)
• Privileges Required (PR): Low (employee role)
• User Interaction (UI): None
• Scope (S): Changed (attacker can affect other users)
• Confidentiality (C): None (no data leak)
• Integrity (I): High (can create unauthorized courses)
• Availability (A): None

Threat Level: High. While the CVSS is unscored, the ease of exploitation and the potential for unauthorized actions make this a serious concern.

Deep Dive & Mechanics

The vulnerability lies in the server-side enforcement of role-based access controls. The Sage DPW application relies on client-side UI restrictions to prevent low-privileged users from creating external courses for others. However, the server does not validate that the authenticated user has the right to perform the action for the specified target user.

Attack Flow:

1. An authenticated employee logs into Sage DPW.
2. The employee initiates a legitimate request to create an external course for themselves.
3. Using a proxy tool (e.g., Burp Suite), the employee intercepts the HTTP request.
4. The attacker modifies the id parameter in the request body or URL from their own user ID to the ID of another employee.
5. The server processes the request without verifying that the authenticated user has permission to create a course for the target user.
6. The external course is created for the target user, potentially leading to unauthorized training assignments, data manipulation, or social engineering.

Vulnerable vs. Patched Code

Vulnerable Code (Conceptual):

# Server-side endpoint (vulnerable)
@app.route('/create_course', methods=['POST'])
def create_course():
    user_id = request.form.get('id')
    course_data = request.form.get('course_data')
    # No check if current user has permission to create for user_id
    db.create_course(user_id, course_data)
    return "Course created"

Patched Code (Conceptual):

# Server-side endpoint (patched)
@app.route('/create_course', methods=['POST'])
def create_course():
    current_user_id = session['user_id']
    target_user_id = request.form.get('id')
    # Verify current user has permission to create for target user
    if not has_permission(current_user_id, 'create_external_course', target_user_id):
        return "Forbidden", 403
    db.create_course(target_user_id, course_data)
    return "Course created"

Exploitation & Lab Setup

Red Team

Prerequisites:

• A valid low-privileged (employee) account on Sage DPW.
• A proxy tool (e.g., Burp Suite, OWASP ZAP).
• Knowledge of another user's ID (can be enumerated).

Exploitation Steps:

1. Log in as the employee.
2. Navigate to the "Create External Course" functionality.
3. Fill in the course details and submit the request.
4. Intercept the request in Burp Suite.
5. Locate the id parameter (e.g., id=123).
6. Change the value to another user's ID (e.g., id=456).
7. Forward the modified request.
8. Verify that the course is created for the target user.

Proof of Concept (PoC) Request:

POST /create_course HTTP/1.1
Host: sage-dpw.example.com
Cookie: session=valid_employee_session
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded

id=456&course_name=Unauthorized+Training&course_type=external

Blue Team

Detection:

• Monitor for multiple course creation requests from a single low-privileged user.
• Alert on requests where the id parameter differs from the authenticated user's ID.
• Log all course creation attempts with user IDs and timestamps.

Prevention:

• Apply the vendor patch (upgrade to 2024_12_001).
• Implement server-side RBAC validation for all sensitive operations.
• Use Web Application Firewall (WAF) rules to block requests with mismatched user IDs.

Indicators of Compromise (IOCs)

• Network: HTTP POST requests to /create_course with modified id parameter.
• Logs: Server logs showing course creation by a user with insufficient privileges.
• Application: Unexpected external courses appearing for users who did not request them.

Detection Engineering

YARA Rule

rule CVE_2024_56883_Sage_DPW_Access_Control {
    meta:
        description = "Detects exploitation attempts of CVE-2024-56883 in Sage DPW"
        author = "Valters IT"
        date = "2025-04-10"
        reference = "CVE-2024-56883"
    strings:
        $s1 = "create_course" ascii nocase
        $s2 = "id=" ascii
        $s3 = "course_type=external" ascii nocase
    condition:
        all of them
}

Sigma Rule

title: Sage DPW Incorrect Access Control Exploitation
id: 7a8b9c0d-1e2f-3a4b-5c6d-7e8f9a0b1c2d
status: experimental
description: Detects attempts to exploit CVE-2024-56883 by modifying the id parameter in course creation requests.
author: Valters IT
date: 2025-04-10
logsource:
    category: webserver
    product: apache
    service: access
detection:
    selection:
        cs-method: 'POST'
        cs-uri-stem: '/create_course'
        cs-uri-query|contains: 'id='
    condition: selection
falsepositives:
    - Legitimate administrative actions
level: high

Suricata Rule

alert http $HOME_NET any -> $EXTERNAL_NET any (
    msg:"CVE-2024-56883 Sage DPW Incorrect Access Control Exploitation";
    flow:to_server,established;
    content:"POST"; http_method;
    content:"/create_course"; http_uri;
    content:"id="; http_client_body;
    pcre:"/id=\d+/";
    sid:1000001;
    rev:1;
    reference:cve,2024-56883;
)

Remediation & Mitigation

Immediate:

1. Upgrade Sage DPW to version 2024_12_001 or later.
2. If patching is not possible, implement a WAF rule to block requests where the id parameter does not match the authenticated user's session.

Long-term:

• Enforce server-side RBAC for all sensitive operations.
• Conduct a security audit of all API endpoints.
• Implement logging and monitoring for privilege escalation attempts.

Valters IT Signature

Report generated by Valters IT Cyber Threat Intelligence Division. For questions, contact: threat-intel@valters-it.com