Several vulnerabilities have been patched in the Drupal content management system (CMS) with the release of version 8.2.7, including access bypass, cross-site request forgery (CSRF) and remote code execution flaws.
The most serious of them, rated critical and tracked as CVE-2017-6377, is an access bypass weakness affecting the editor module.
“When adding a private file via a configured text editor (like CKEditor), the editor will not correctly check access for the file being attached, resulting in an access bypass,” Drupal said in its security advisory.
The CSRF flaw, identified as CVE-2017-6379 and rated moderately critical, can be exploited to disable some blocks on a website, but the attacker needs to know the targeted block’s ID. The security hole is caused by the lack of CSRF protection on some administrative paths.
The remote code execution vulnerability, CVE-2017-6381, which has also been rated moderately critical, affects a third-party development library. The flaw, related to development dependencies, is mitigated by the fact that Composer dependencies are typically not installed, and by the default PHP execution protection in .htaccess.
Drupal 8.2.7 includes a security update for phpunit development dependencies. This version ensures that Drupal core requires the most secure version of phpunit available. Using development dependencies in production is not recommended.
Drupal also announced this week that it has found a way to make it easier for users to update the CMS, including from one major version to the next (e.g. from Drupal 8 to the future Drupal 9).
While Drupal is not as targeted as WordPress or Joomla, security firms have seen attacks aimed at websites powered by this CMS. In its latest hacked website report, Sucuri said many of the Drupal websites compromised last year had been running outdated versions.
In September, the SANS Institute’s Internet Storm Center reported seeing attempts to exploit a highly critical vulnerability that had been patched two months earlier.
Related: Restriction Bypass, XSS Flaws Patched in Drupal 8