Disabled XSRF Protection
Description:
Atlassian Confluence provides users the ability to include themes and external plugins. Some older themes or plugins may require users to disable XSRF Protection as pointed out below:
Some third-party or deprecated Confluence themes will not work with the new Confluence XSRF protection. You may disable XSRF protection to support old themes at the cost of reducing security. - Atlassian Confluence Docs
However, turning off the built-in XSRF Protection in your Confluence instance can open up new attack vectors for bad actors to abuse!
Testing:
In case XSRF Protection is turned off, bad actors could post comments on other user's behalf by just sending them a link to an attacker controlled site that replicates the POST request. The POST request will request the server to create a comment on the victim's behalf without their knowledge.
Remediation:
It is always recommended to upgrade and use the latest version available of Atlassian Confluence.
Navigate to your Confluence instance and sign in
Open your Administrator Settings by clicking on the gear icon next to your profile picture
In your side navigation bar, scroll down to Security and open Security Configurations
Make sure that XSRF Protection for adding comments is enabled
Save your changes
Potential Impact:
When XSRF-protection is turned off, it is possible for malicious users to target authenticated users by sending them a specially crafted link that'd automatically for example post a comment on the victim's behalf.
References:
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