octobercms in a CMS platform based on the Laravel PHP Framework. In affected versions of the october/system package an attacker can exploit this vulnerability to bypass authentication and takeover of and user account on an October CMS server. The vulnerability is exploitable by unauthenticated users via a specially crafted request. This only affects frontend users and the attacker must obtain a Laravel secret key for cookie encryption and signing in order to exploit this vulnerability. The issue has been patched in Build 472 and v1.1.5.
Affected: Packagist: october/system
### Impact
An attacker can exploit this vulnerability to bypass authentication using a specially crafted persist cookie.
- To exploit this vulnerability, an attacker must obtain a Laravel’s secret key for cookie encryption and signing. - Due to the logic of how this mechanism works, a targeted user account must be logged in while the attacker is exploiting the vulnerability. - Authorization via persist cookie not shown in access logs.
### Patches
- Issue has been patched in Build 472 and v1.1.5 - [Shortened patch instructions](https://github.com/daftspunk/CVE-2021-32648)
### Workarounds
Apply https://github.com/octobercms/library/commit/016a297b1bec55d2e53bc889458ed2cb5c3e9374 and https://github.com/octobercms/library/commit/5bd1a28140b825baebe6becd4f7562299d3de3b9 to your installation manually if you are unable to upgrade.
[**Update 2022-01-20**] [Shortened patch instructions](https://github.com/daftspunk/CVE-2021-32648) can be found here.
### Recommendations
We recommend the following steps to make sure your server stays secure:
- Keep server OS and system software up to date. - Keep October CMS software up to date. - Use a multi-factor authentication plugin. - Change the [default backend URL](https://github.com/octobercms/october/blob/1.1/config/cms.php#L39) or block public access to the backend area. - Include the [Roave/SecurityAdvisories](https://github.com/Roave/SecurityAdvisories) Composer package to ensure that your application doesn't have installed depen…