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QuayApplication · Redhat

CVE-2023-4959

MEDIUM · 6.5 CVSS v3.1 Published 2023-09-15
Mitigation only
No fix yet — a mitigation exists. There is no fixed release. A documented workaround reduces exposure in the meantime.
See remediation →
72/100
Remediation priority · Elevated
Remotely reachable No privileges

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
A flaw was found in Quay. Cross-site request forgery (CSRF) attacks force a user to perform unwanted actions in an application. During the pentest, it was detected that the config-editor page is vulnerable to CSRF. The config-editor page is used to configure the Quay instance. By coercing the victim’s browser into sending an attacker-controlled request from another domain, it is possible to reconfigure the Quay instance (including adding users with admin privileges).

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

A cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerability exists in Quay's config-editor page. An attacker can exploit this by tricking an authenticated administrator into visiting a malicious page, causing the victim's browser to send forged requests that reconfigure the Quay instance, including adding new users with administrative privileges.

MitigationImplement anti-CSRF tokens on all state-changing operations in the config-editor and validate these tokens on the server side. Additionally, set SameSite=Strict or SameSite=Lax attributes on session cookies and validate Origin/Referer headers.

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
QuayApplication
Affected:= 3.0.0

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
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
Required
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
High
Availability
None

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N

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. Identify Quay version
    Query the Quay API endpoint /api/v1/superuser/ or check the container/image version running in your environment (e.g., docker ps, kubectl get pods)
    Affected if The installed version is exactly 3.0.0
  2. Verify config-editor endpoint is exposed
    Access the Quay admin interface and navigate to the configuration editor page (typically /admin or /config-editor)
    Affected if The config-editor page is accessible to authenticated administrators
  3. Inspect config-editor forms for CSRF tokens
    View the HTML source of the config-editor page and search for hidden form fields containing _csrf, csrf_token, or similar anti-CSRF token patterns
    Affected if No CSRF token fields are present in state-changing forms on the config-editor page
  4. Check session cookie SameSite attribute
    Log into Quay and inspect session cookies via browser dev tools (Application > Cookies) or use curl -I to examine Set-Cookie headers for the SameSite attribute
    Affected if Session cookies do not have SameSite=Strict or SameSite=Lax attributes set
  5. Test Origin header validation
    Send a manual request to a config-editor state-changing endpoint with a mismatched Origin header (e.g., via curl) and observe if the request is accepted without rejection
    Affected if The server accepts requests with arbitrary or mismatched Origin headers on sensitive config endpoints

Your environment is affected if running Quay version 3.0.0 AND the config-editor lacks CSRF token protection on its forms.

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 on all state-changing operations in the config-editor and validate these tokens on the server side. Additionally, set SameSite=Strict or SameSite=Lax attributes on session cookies and validate Origin/Referer headers.

Fix this in Quay Scoped from the published advisory
  • Consultation4.0 h
  • Implementation8.0 h
  • Testing4.0 h
  • Review / QA2.0 h
18.0 hours of engineering $3,200
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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-2023-4959 in production — separate from our analysis above.

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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
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