CVE-2013-0625

What is Adobe ColdFusion?

Adobe ColdFusion is an enterprise application server and development platform for building web applications, primarily used in government agencies, financial institutions, and large enterprises. ColdFusion applications are often internet-facing and handle sensitive data — making authentication bypass vulnerabilities especially dangerous. ColdFusion includes a Remote Development Service (RDS) designed for IDE-based development access, which has historically been a source of authentication weaknesses when left enabled on production servers.

Overview

CVE-2013-0625 is an authentication bypass vulnerability (CWE-287) in Adobe ColdFusion that allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to gain administrative access to the ColdFusion Administrator interface. The vulnerability relates to improper authentication handling in the ColdFusion RDS (Remote Development Service) component — when RDS is enabled with its default configuration, an attacker can exploit the authentication flaw to bypass login controls and reach privileged administrative functionality.

Adobe patched this in Security Bulletin APSB13-03 on January 9, 2013, alongside the related vulnerabilities CVE-2013-0629 (directory traversal) and CVE-2013-0631 (information disclosure).

Affected Versions

Technical Details

Adobe ColdFusion's RDS service, intended for development environments to allow IDE tools to connect and browse server resources, was improperly secured in production configurations. The authentication bypass (CWE-287) allowed attackers to send requests that should require authentication without presenting valid credentials, gaining access to ColdFusion Administrator functionality.

ColdFusion Administrator access is highly privileged — it allows:

• Reading and writing server-side files
• Viewing and modifying datasource (database) connection credentials
• Deploying ColdFusion applications and code
• Modifying server configuration, including enabling additional services

Combined with the companion CVE-2013-0629 (directory traversal) and CVE-2013-0631 (information disclosure) in the same bulletin, attackers who exploited CVE-2013-0625 often chained all three vulnerabilities to fully compromise the server.

Discovery

The three ColdFusion vulnerabilities patched in APSB13-03 were discovered through security research and coordinated disclosure. Adobe's January 2013 emergency bulletin addressed multiple issues that had been used in observed attacks.

Exploitation Context

CISA confirmed in-the-wild exploitation. Internet-facing ColdFusion servers were systematically targeted by attackers seeking to exploit these authentication and access control weaknesses. Successful compromise of ColdFusion Administrator allowed uploading of malicious ColdFusion files (.cfm webshells), accessing database credentials stored in datasource configurations, and pivoting into backend database systems.

Remediation

1. Apply APSB13-03 on all ColdFusion 9.x and 10 installations
2. Disable RDS on production servers — RDS is a development tool and should never be enabled in production; verify this setting in ColdFusion Administrator
3. Restrict access to the ColdFusion Administrator interface to internal/management networks only — it should not be publicly internet-accessible
4. Apply Adobe's ColdFusion lockdown guides, which document secure deployment practices
5. Audit server-side file systems for .cfm or other application files created after the date of any suspected compromise
6. Review ColdFusion datasource configurations and rotate all database credentials as a precaution