CVE-2021-28680 Improper Privilege Management in devise_masquerade

What is CVE-2021-28680?

CVE-2021-28680 is a high-severity authentication bypass vulnerability in n/a, published on 7 Dec 2021. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

Official description

The devise_masquerade gem before 1.3 allows certain attacks when a password's salt is unknown. An application that uses this gem to let administrators masquerade/impersonate users loses one layer of security protection compared to a situation where Devise (without this extension) is used. If the server-side secret_key_base value became publicly known (for instance if it is committed to a public repository by mistake), there are still other protections in place that prevent an attacker from impersonating any user on the site. When masquerading is not used in a plain Devise application, one must know the password salt of the target user if one wants to encrypt and sign a valid session cookie. When devise_masquerade is used, however, an attacker can decide which user the "back" action will go back to without knowing that user's password salt and simply knowing the user ID, by manipulating the session cookie and pretending that a user is already masqueraded by an administrator.

Which versions are affected by CVE-2021-28680?

2 open source packages ship an affected version, including devise_masquerade. It affects 1 product.

Products include Devise Masquerade Project Devise Masquerade.

How do I fix CVE-2021-28680?

Upgrade devise_masquerade to 1.3.1 or later.

Upgrade, and rotate credentials and sessions that may have been exposed. More about Authentication bypass.

Is CVE-2021-28680 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2021-28680 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as GHSA-25f5-gc4h-hc22.