Adobe warns of actively exploited ColdFusion flaws

IDG News Service - Adobe Systems warned users of its ColdFusion application server software that hackers are reportedly exploiting unpatched vulnerabilities in the product to take control of affected servers.

The company published a security advisory on Friday regarding three critical vulnerabilities -- identified as CVE-2013-0625, CVE-2013-0629 and CVE-2013-0631-- that affect ColdFusion versions 10, 9.0.2, 9.0.1 and 9.0.

CVE-2013-0625 can be exploited to bypass authentication controls and take control of a ColdFusion server, CVE-2013-0629 can allow unauthorized users to access restricted directories on a vulnerable server and CVE-2013-0631 can result in information disclosure.

"There are reports that these vulnerabilities are being exploited in the wild against ColdFusion customers," Adobe said in the advisory. "Note that CVE-2013-0625 and CVE-2013-0629 only affect ColdFusion customers who do not have password protection enabled or have no password set."

The company is working to develop patches for the vulnerabilities and expects to release them on Jan. 15. Meanwhile, customers are advised to follow several steps to mitigate the risks associated with these flaws.

The steps include: configuring a user name and password that is different from the one used for the Administrator account for Remote Development Services (RDS); disabling RDS; disabling external access to the /CFIDE/administrator, /CFIDE/adminapi and /CFIDE/componentutils directories for all hosted sites; removing unnecessary ColdFusion components or templates from the CFIDE or webroot directories; implementing access control restrictions for the Administrator interface and internal applications; installing all available ColdFusion hotfixes and following the previously published security best practices for ColdFusion 9 and ColdFusion 10.