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MoodleCMS

CVE-2011-4281

MEDIUM · 6.8 CVSS v2.0 Published 2012-07-16
Mitigation only
No fix yet — a mitigation exists. There is no fixed release. A documented workaround reduces exposure in the meantime.
See remediation →
77/100
Remediation priority · High
Remotely reachable No privileges Zero-click

Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.

NVD · unedited
Multiple cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerabilities in Moodle 2.0.x before 2.0.2 allow remote attackers to hijack the authentication of arbitrary users for requests that mark the completion of (1) an activity or (2) a course.

Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.

dbcve analysis · high confidence

Multiple CSRF vulnerabilities in Moodle 2.0.x before 2.0.2 allow remote attackers to hijack the authentication of arbitrary users by tricking them into submitting malicious requests that mark activities or courses as complete without proper anti-CSRF token validation.

MitigationImplement anti-CSRF tokens (form tokens) on all activity and course completion submission forms and validate these tokens server-side before processing completion requests.

Verify against the referenced sources before acting — the references below are authoritative for this CVE, this summary is not.

Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.

NVD · CPE data
MoodleCMS
Affected:= 2.0.0= 2.0.1

CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.

From the vector
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
M
Authentication
None
Confidentiality
Partial
Integrity
Partial
Availability
Partial

AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

Am I affected? How to checkSteps we derive from the advisory and the affected-version data, so you can decide whether this CVE reaches your setup. They are a guide, not a scan — your own configuration is the authority.

dbcve checks

Work through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.

  1. Determine installed Moodle version
    Navigate to Site Administration > Server > Environment page in the Moodle admin interface, or inspect the $version variable in lib/version.php file
    Affected if Version is 2.0.0 or 2.0.1 (any version before 2.0.2 in the 2.0.x branch)
  2. Inspect activity completion form source code
    View the HTML source of activity completion submission forms (such as mod/quiz/completion.php or similar activity completion handlers). Look for a hidden input field containing a session key or form token (commonly named sesskey)
    Affected if The activity completion form lacks a sesskey or formtoken hidden input field for CSRF protection
  3. Verify course completion form has anti-CSRF token
    Examine the course completion update form (typically course/completion.php). Check the rendered HTML for the presence of a security token parameter
    Affected if The course completion form does not include a CSRF token (sesskey) in its submission

You are affected if your Moodle version is 2.0.0 or 2.0.1 AND the activity or course completion forms are missing anti-CSRF token validation.

Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.

Check your environment

Paste your version and any relevant configuration and it will be compared against the affected criteria above. Do not include secrets or credentials.

AI-assisted, checked against the advisory. Informational, not a guarantee.

Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.

From vendor data
Mitigation available No clean upgrade yet — mitigate in the meantime
Mitigation

Implement anti-CSRF tokens (form tokens) on all activity and course completion submission forms and validate these tokens server-side before processing completion requests.

Fix this in Moodle Scoped from the published advisory
  • Consultation3.0 h
  • Implementation12.0 h
  • Testing6.0 h
  • Review / QA3.0 h
24.0 hours of engineering $4,200
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References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2011-4281 in production — separate from our analysis above.

No notes yet

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What this is

A place for practitioners to share what actually worked: a mitigation you’ve tested, a configuration change, a version- or environment-specific caveat, or a link to a verified patch. The most useful notes rise to the top as peers upvote them, so the signal stays high.

What belongs here
  • Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
  • Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
  • No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
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