Drupal developers have released updates for versions 7 and 8 to address security flaws that can lead to information disclosure, cache poisoning, redirection to third-party sites and a denial-of-service (DoS) condition.
Drupal 7.52 and Drupal 8.2.3 patch a total of four vulnerabilities rated “moderately critical” and “less critical.”
One of the more serious issues affecting Drupal 8 can be exploited to cause a DoS condition using specially crafted URLs via the transliteration mechanism, which cleans filenames by replacing certain characters, such as the ones used in Russian and Greek, with universally displayable US-ASCII characters.
A moderately critical flaw in Drupal 7 can allow attackers, in certain circumstances, to construct a confirmation form URL that redirects users to third-party websites after interacting with the form. This vulnerability can be useful for social engineering attacks.
The user password reset form in Drupal 8 fails to specify a proper cache context, allowing cache poisoning attacks and unwanted content on the page.
A “less critical” vulnerability affecting both Drupal 7 and 8 is related to inconsistent names for term access queries. The issue can lead to information on taxonomy terms being disclosed to unprivileged users.
These security holes were discovered by external researchers and a member of the Drupal Security Team.
It’s not uncommon for Drupal vulnerabilities to be exploited in the wild. In mid-September, experts warned that a highly critical flaw patched in July had been exploited in attacks aimed at Drupal websites.
Unfortunately, many website administrators leave their Drupal installations unpatched for extended periods of time. For example, the vulnerability dubbed Drupalgeddon, which developers patched in October 2014, had still been exploited to hack websites more than 19 months later.
Related: Drupal Patches Critical Vulnerabilities in Three Modules
