CVE-2020-5225

MEDIUM4.4EPSS 0.17%

Log injection in SimpleSAMLphp

Published: 1/24/2020Modified: 3/14/2026
Also known as:GHSA-6gc6-m364-85ww

Description

### Background SimpleSAMLphp has a logging functionality that allows system administrators to keep track of the activity, errors, and statistics. Additionally, it allows users to report errors, shall they happen. An error report contains a report identifier, which is logged once submitted. ### Description The `www/erroreport.php` script, which receives error reports and sends them via email to the system administrator, didn't properly sanitize the report identifier obtained from the request. This allows an attacker, under specific circumstances, to inject new log lines by manually crafting this report ID. When configured to use the `file` logging handler, SimpleSAMLphp will output all its logs by appending each log line to a given file. Since the `reportID` parameter received in a request sent to `www/errorreport.php` was not properly sanitized, it was possible to inject newline characters into it, effectively allowing a malicious user to inject new log lines with arbitrary content. ### Affected versions SimpleSAMLphp versions up to **1.18.3**. ### Impact An attacker may use this issue to inject logs messages into a SimpleSAMLphp log file, trying to trick or confuse system administrators. However, the attack surface is considered small, as the attack will only work with the `file` logging handler, which opens the log file in _append-only_ mode. This means an attacker cannot edit or remove existing log messages, and even if non-ascii characters are written to the log, the file will always be readable with a simple text editor. ### Resolution Upgrade the SimpleSAMLphp installation to version **1.18.4**. ### Credit This vulnerability was discovered and reported by Frederic Vleminckx on January 23, 2020.

Affected packages (2)

CVSS scores

SourceVersionSeverityVector
osvCVSS 3.1MEDIUM4.4CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N

References (4)