More Scope Injection for Fun and Profit (or, why those security updates broke your functions)

Introduction 

Like "Big Two-Hearted River," my last post also has a Part II.  I had previously spent countless hours trying to create a UDFMethod object from user-controlled data via the Service Layer endpoints and eventually gave up decided it was just not possible.  But I had learned more about how lots of ColdFusion internals work -- including variable casting, object types, and functions.  And I kept at it.  While I wasn't able to achieve remote code execution, I ultimately did find a few new scope injection vulnerabilities later on.  These vulnerabilities highlight a broader and often overlooked risk: assumptions about scope isolation and variable safety can quietly break down at the framework level. When that happens, even well-intentioned application logic can become vulnerable in unexpected ways.

The corresponding patches for these vulnerabilities introduced breaking changes with the security fixes -- specifically, the requirement to explicitly declare all arguments for remote functions from APSB25-52 and the changes around scope precedence and variable name reserved words from APSB25-105. Read on as we explore the technical details of how they work and what the underlying risks are.

Districton 1 Slides - Control the Variables and You Control the Code: Language-Level Vulnerabilities in Adobe ColdFusion

It was an honor to speak at DistrictCon Year 1 (which is its second year.  Unlike ColdFusion, DistrictCon counts from 0. 😀)

I got some great questions and feedback after my talk, attended a bunch interesting sessions, and really enjoyed the weekend.  And yes, there was snow.  Lots and lots of snow.  But the conference team, hotel staff, and attendees all handled the weather incredibly well.  I'm already looking forward to next year, and thinking about potential Junkyard targets...

The slides from my talk -- Control the Variables and You Control the Code: Language-Level Vulnerabilities in Adobe ColdFusion -- are now available online below.  Be sure to check out my longer blog post talking about several of the vulnerabilities covered in my presentation too!

An SSRF to LFI Payload for PDF Generators (CVE-2024-34112 and beyond)

"Hola, amigos. How’s it hangin’? I know it’s been a long time since I last rapped at ya, but I've been busier than a feather plucker on nickel wing night, ya know?  You old buddy Jimbo found some discarded books out back next to the dumpster at the inconvenience store about something called 'Cold Fusion' and I've been reading through those bad boys.  Shoulda called it CON-Fusion if ya ask me.  But I've been having trouble reading the printed word and gettin' these awful headaches ever since I popped in side two of 'Hemispheres' and lit up some sweet Thai Stick I found underneath the passenger side seat of my crapbox Festiva -- that turned out to be the taquito I dropped last July after the Dane County Fair.  It just goes to show ya, yours truly can't catch a break in this world."

[ It was at this point that we decided it wouldn't be a good idea to let Mr. Anchower write the entire blog post.  We weren't wrong.   -Ed. ]

Ahem.  Quick post for today on an SSRF payload that can potentially be used for local file retrieval.  I'll be framing it in the context of CVE-2024-34112, but it could be a viable attack against any application that is doing server-side PDF generation with user-controlled data.  

SSRF in ColdFusion/CFML Tags and Functions

TL;DR: Several ColdFusion/CFML tags and functions can process URLs as file path arguments -- including some tags and and functions that you might not expect.  This can lead to Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) vulnerabilities in your code.  Developers should be sure to validate any user input passed to the affected tags and functions.