• Advisory ID: DRUPAL-SA-CORE-2009-001
• Project: Drupal core
• Versions: 5.x and 6.x
• Date: 2009-January-14
• Security risk: Moderately Critical
• Exploitable from: Remote
• Vulnerability: Multiple vulnerabilities

Multiple vulnerabilities and weaknesses were discovered in Drupal.

Access Bypass

The Content Translation module for Drupal 6.x enables users to make a translation of an existing item of content (a node). In that process the existing node’s content is copied into the new node’s submission form.

The module contains a flaw that allows a user with the ‘translate content’ permission to potentially bypass normal viewing access restrictions, for example allowing the user to see the content of unpublished nodes even if they do not have permission to view unpublished nodes.

This issue only affects Drupal 6.x.

Validation Bypass

When user profile pictures are enabled, the default user profile validation function will be bypassed, possibly allowing invalid user names or e-mail addresses to be submitted.

This issue only affects Drupal 6.x.

Hardening against SQL injection

A parameter passed into the node access API was not properly escaped or validated before being used in SQL queries. While there is no direct risk of SQL injection from Drupal core, it’s possible that this could have presented a risk in combination with a contributed module. Additional validation has been added to eliminate this risk.

This issue affects both Drupal 5.x and Drupal 6.x.

Versions Affected

• Drupal 5.x before version 5.15.
• Drupal 6.x before version 6.9.

Solution

Install the latest version:

• If you are running Drupal 5.x then upgrade to Drupal 5.15.
• If you are running Drupal 6.x then upgrade to Drupal 6.9.

If you are unable to upgrade immediately, you can apply a patch to secure your installation until you are able to do a proper upgrade. The patches fix security vulnerabilities, but do not contain other fixes which were released in these versions.

• To patch Drupal 5.14 use SA-CORE-2009-001-5.14.patch.
• To patch Drupal 6.8 use SA-CORE-2009-001-6.8.patch.

Reported by

The access bypass issue for translations was reported by Wolfgang Ziegler.

The validation bypass was reported by v1nce, supersmashbrothers, Tejus Pratap, and Limiting Factor.

The need for SQL hardening was reported by Derek Wright of the Drupal Security Team.

Contact

The security team for Drupal can be reached at security at drupal.org or via the form at http://drupal.org/contact.