Joomla Password Reset Weakness and Session Fixation Vulnerability

SECUNIA ADVISORY ID:
SA39616

VERIFY ADVISORY:
http://secunia.com/advisories/39616/

DESCRIPTION:
A weakness and a vulnerability have been reported in Joomla, which
can be exploited by malicious people to disclose sensitive
information and conduct session fixation attacks.

1) The weakness is caused due to password reset tokens being stored
in plain text in the database, which can be exploited to reset a
user's password if the token can be disclosed (e.g. by exploiting a
SQL injection vulnerability).

2 )The vulnerability is caused due to an error in the handling of
sessions and can be exploited to hijack another user's session by
tricking the user into logging in after following a specially crafted
link.

NOTE: Errors in the Installer Migration Script and in handling of
Limit and Offset queries were also fixed.

The weakness and the vulnerability are reported in versions prior to
1.5.16.

SOLUTION:
Update to version 1.5.16 or later.

PROVIDED AND/OR DISCOVERED BY:
1) The vendor credits Madis Abel.
2) The vendor credits Raul Siles and Steven Pignataro.

ORIGINAL ADVISORY:
http://developer.joomla.org/security/news/308-20100423-core-password-reset-tokens.html
http://developer.joomla.org/security/news/309-20100423-core-sessation-fixation.html
http://developer.joomla.org/security/news/310-20100423-core-installer-migration-script.html
http://developer.joomla.org/security/news/311-20100423-core-negative-values-for-limit-and-offset.html