CVE-2012-0308
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 · uneditedCross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in Symantec Messaging Gateway (SMG) before 10.0 allows remote attackers to hijack the authentication of administrators.
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 confidenceCross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in Symantec Messaging Gateway allows remote attackers to hijack administrator authentication by tricking authenticated administrators into visiting malicious URLs or pages that perform unauthorized actions on the SMG admin interface.
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<= 9.5.4= 9.5= 9.5.1= 9.5.2= 9.5.3= 10.0CVSS 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 checksWork through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.
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Identify installed SMG versionAccess the SMG admin interface, typically at https://hostname:8443/admin, and navigate to Administration > Settings > About, or run 'smg --version' from the command line if available. Alternatively, check the GUI footer or the system information page for the exact version number.Affected if The version is 9.5, 9.5.1, 9.5.2, 9.5.3, 9.5.4, or exactly 10.0.
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Inspect admin login page for anti-CSRF tokensLog into the SMG admin interface and view the page source (right-click > View Page Source) of any admin page, such as the dashboard or settings page. Search for hidden form fields named 'token', 'csrf', 'nonce', or similar security token patterns.Affected if No anti-CSRF token or unique nonce hidden form fields are present in admin POST forms.
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Verify SameSite cookie attributes on admin sessionOpen browser developer tools (F12), go to the Application/Storage tab, find the admin session cookie (typically named 'JSESSIONID' or 'sessionId'), and inspect its attributes. Alternatively, capture the Set-Cookie header with a proxy and check for 'SameSite=Strict' or 'SameSite=Lax' attributes.Affected if The admin session cookie lacks SameSite attribute or has 'SameSite=None' without Secure flag.
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Test for Referer/Origin validation on admin actionsUse a browser proxy to intercept an admin action request (such as saving settings), remove or modify the Referer and Origin headers, then replay the request. If the action succeeds without these headers, the application lacks origin validation.Affected if Admin actions complete successfully without valid Referer or Origin headers, indicating missing CSRF protection.
The environment is affected if the installed Symantec Messaging Gateway version is 9.5 through 9.5.4 or exactly 10.0, AND the admin interface lacks anti-CSRF tokens, SameSite cookie attributes, and proper origin header validation.
Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.
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 dataUpgrade to Symantec Messaging Gateway version 10.0 or later which contains the fix; implement anti-CSRF tokens and SameSite cookie attributes as defense-in-depth.
- Consultation1.0 h
- Implementation2.0 h
- Testing2.0 h
- Review / QA1.0 h
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Scan for this in your stack
Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2012-0308 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.
References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.
Primary sourcesPractitioner notes
ContributedPeer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2012-0308 in production — separate from our analysis above.
The advisory tells you what broke. It rarely tells you what actually worked. If you’ve dealt with this one, that detail is what the next engineer is searching for.
- The version that genuinely resolved it — not the one the vendor claimed
- A config change or rule that shut the vector down
- A gotcha in the upgrade path that cost you an afternoon
No notes yet
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- 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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