CVE-2021-3850

Impact

An attacker can inject values into a PostgreSQL connection string by providing a parameter surrounded by single quotes.

Depending on how the library is used in the client software, this may allow an attacker to bypass the login process, gain access to the server's IP address, etc.

Patches

The vulnerability is fixed in ADOdb versions 5.20.21 (952de6c4273d9b1e91c2b838044f8c2111150c29) and 5.21.4 or later (b4d5ce70034c5aac3a1d51d317d93c037a0938d2).

The simplest patch is to delete line 29 in drivers/adodb-postgres64.inc.php:

diff --git a/drivers/adodb-postgres64.inc.php b/drivers/adodb-postgres64.inc.php
index d04b7f67..729d7141 100644
--- a/drivers/adodb-postgres64.inc.php
+++ b/drivers/adodb-postgres64.inc.php
@@ -26,7 +26,6 @@ function adodb_addslashes($s)
 {
    $len = strlen($s);
    if ($len == 0) return "''";
-   if (strncmp($s,"'",1) === 0 && substr($s,$len-1) == "'") return $s; // already quoted
 
    return "'".addslashes($s)."'";
 }

Workarounds

Ensure the parameters passed to ADOConnection::connect() or related functions (nConnect(), pConnect()) are not surrounded by single quotes.

Credits

Thanks to Emmet Leahy (@meme-lord) of Sorcery Ltd for reporting this vulnerability, and to the huntr team for their support.

References

• Original issue report https://huntr.dev/bounties/bdf5f216-4499-4225-a737-b28bc6f5801c/
• ADOdb reference issue #793

For more information

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory:

• Add a note in issue #793
• Contact the maintainers on Gitter

Authentication Bypass by Primary Weakness in GitHub repository adodb/adodb prior to 5.20.21.

Security hotfix release addressing a critical vulnerability in PostgreSQL connections (CVE-2021-3850)

Additional fixes: Fix usage of get_magic_* functions #619 #657 Fix PHP warning in _rs2rs() function #679 pdo: Fix Fatal error in _query() #666 pdo: Fix undefined variable #678 pgsql: Fix Fatal error in _close() method (PHP8) #666 pgsql: fix deprecated function aliases (PHP8) #667 text: fix Cannot pass parameter by reference #668 Add support for persistent connections in PDO driver #650 Connect to SQL Server database on a specified port. #624 DSN database connection with password containing # fails #651 Metacolumns returns wrong type for integer fields in Mysql 8 #642 Uninitialized Variable access in mssqlnative ErrorNo() method #637

It was discovered that the PDO driver in ADOdb was incorrectly handling string quotes. A remote attacker could possibly use this issue to perform SQL injection attacks. This issue only affected Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. (CVE-2016-7405)

It was discovered that ADOdb was incorrectly handling GET parameters in test.php. A remote attacker could possibly use this issue to execute cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks. This issue only affected Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. (CVE-2016-4855)

Emmet Leahy discovered that ADOdb was incorrectly handling string quotes in PostgreSQL connections. A remote attacker could possibly use this issue to bypass authentication. (CVE-2021-3850)