CVE-2018-25343: Smartshop 1 CSRF Vulnerability

CVE-2018-25343 Overview

CVE-2018-25343 is a cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerability [CWE-352] affecting Smartshop 1, an open-source e-commerce application. The flaw resides in the editprofile.php endpoint, which fails to validate the origin or authenticity of incoming profile-modification requests. Attackers can craft malicious HTML forms with hidden email and password fields that auto-submit when an authenticated user, particularly an administrator, visits an attacker-controlled page. Successful exploitation enables unauthorized modification of user account credentials, leading to account takeover.

Critical Impact

An attacker who lures an authenticated Smartshop admin to a malicious page can silently change the admin's email and password, resulting in full account takeover of the e-commerce application.

Affected Products

• Smartshop 1 (open-source e-commerce application by smakosh)
• editprofile.php endpoint of the Smartshop application
• Deployments sourced from the Smartshop GitHub repository

Discovery Timeline

• 2026-05-23 - CVE-2018-25343 published to NVD
• 2026-05-26 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2018-25343

Vulnerability Analysis

The vulnerability is a classic cross-site request forgery weakness in the Smartshop 1 user profile workflow. The editprofile.php script accepts POST requests that update account fields including email and password, but the handler does not verify the origin of the request. There is no anti-CSRF token, no Origin or Referer validation, and no re-authentication step before sensitive account changes are committed. Because the application relies solely on the session cookie attached automatically by the browser, any cross-origin request issued while the victim has an active Smartshop session executes with the victim's privileges. When the victim holds administrative rights, the impact escalates to full administrative account compromise of the e-commerce platform.

Root Cause

The root cause is the absence of CSRF protections on a state-changing endpoint. Smartshop 1 does not generate per-session or per-request synchronizer tokens, does not enforce SameSite cookie attributes, and does not require knowledge of the current password before updating credentials. This mirrors the CWE-352 pattern, where authenticity of intent is never validated.

Attack Vector

An attacker hosts a page containing a hidden HTML form that targets the Smartshop editprofile.php URL with attacker-chosen email and password values. The form auto-submits via JavaScript when the victim, already authenticated to the Smartshop instance, loads the malicious page. The browser attaches the victim's session cookie, and the server processes the credential change as if it were a legitimate action. Technical reproduction details are documented in Exploit-DB #44824 and the VulnCheck Smartshop CSRF Advisory.

Detection Methods for CVE-2018-25343

Indicators of Compromise

• Unexpected POST requests to editprofile.php with Referer or Origin headers pointing to external or unrelated domains.
• Sudden changes to administrator email addresses or password hashes in the Smartshop user database without a corresponding legitimate session activity trail.
• Successful authentication events from new IP addresses or geographies immediately following a profile update.

Detection Strategies

• Inspect web server access logs for POST /editprofile.php entries where the Referer header is missing or does not match the application's own domain.
• Correlate user profile change events with the originating session's prior navigation history to flag requests that arrive without a preceding GET of the edit profile page.
• Hunt for outbound clicks or email links followed within seconds by a profile update event on the same session.

Monitoring Recommendations

• Enable verbose logging of all administrative profile changes, including timestamps, source IPs, and User-Agent strings.
• Alert on any modification of administrator credentials and require out-of-band confirmation for such events.
• Monitor for the appearance of Smartshop in asset inventories, since the project is no longer actively maintained and should be flagged for migration.

How to Mitigate CVE-2018-25343

Immediate Actions Required

• Restrict access to Smartshop administrative interfaces by IP allowlist or VPN until the application is patched or replaced.
• Force a password reset for all Smartshop accounts, particularly administrators, and verify that current credentials match expected owners.
• Set session cookies with the SameSite=Strict and Secure attributes at the web server or reverse proxy layer to block cross-site cookie transmission.

Patch Information

No official vendor patch is referenced in the advisory data. Smartshop 1 is an open-source project, and operators should review the upstream Smartshop repository for community updates or apply application-level fixes by adding per-request anti-CSRF tokens to editprofile.php and validating them server-side before processing any profile modification. Consult the VulnCheck advisory for the authoritative description of the issue.

Workarounds

• Add a synchronizer token check to every state-changing form in Smartshop, rejecting any POST to editprofile.php that lacks a valid token bound to the user session.
• Require the current password to be re-entered before applying any change to the email or password fields.
• Deploy a web application firewall rule that blocks cross-origin POST requests to editprofile.php based on Origin and Referer header inspection.

# Example nginx rule to block cross-origin POSTs to editprofile.php
location = /editprofile.php {
    if ($request_method = POST) {
        set $csrf_block "0";
        if ($http_origin !~* "^https?://your-smartshop-domain\.tld$") {
            set $csrf_block "1";
        }
        if ($http_referer !~* "^https?://your-smartshop-domain\.tld/") {
            set $csrf_block "${csrf_block}1";
        }
        if ($csrf_block != "0") {
            return 403;
        }
    }
    include fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_pass php_backend;
}