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Public proof of concept

CVE-2019-11231

A public proof of concept exists; no exploitation attested.

  • Published2019-05-22
  • WeaknessCWE-22

Am I affected?

With a domain, we read the version its public headers and pages expose. A distribution build can carry the fix under an older number.

Description

An issue was discovered in GetSimple CMS through 3.3.15. insufficient input sanitation in the theme-edit.php file allows upload of files with arbitrary content (PHP code, for example). This vulnerability is triggered by an authenticated user; however, authentication can be bypassed. According to the official documentation for installation step 10, an admin is required to upload all the files, including the .htaccess files, and run a health check. However, what is overlooked is that the Apache HTTP Server by default no longer enables the AllowOverride directive, leading to data/users/admin.xml password exposure. The passwords are hashed but this can be bypassed by starting with the data/other/authorization.xml API key. This allows one to target the session state, since they decided to roll their own implementation. The cookie_name is crafted information that can be leaked from the frontend (site name and version). If a someone leaks the API key and the admin username, then they can bypass authentication. To do so, they need to supply a cookie based on an SHA-1 computation of this known information. The vulnerability exists in the admin/theme-edit.php file. This file checks for forms submissions via POST requests, and for the csrf nonce. If the nonce sent is correct, then the file provided by the user is uploaded. There is a path traversal allowing write access outside the jailed themes directory root. Exploiting the traversal is not necessary because the .htaccess file is ignored. A contributing factor is that there isn't another check on the extension before saving the file, with the assumption that the parameter content is safe. This allows the creation of web accessible and executable files with arbitrary content.

Timeline

dates in UTC
  1. 2019-05-20Exploit-DB entryExploit-DB
  2. 2019-05-2218:29CVE publishedNVD

Observed activity

isMalicious corpus · updated 2026-11-04 09:37 UTC
Indicators tagged with this CVE, per day0 indicators over 7 days
Block these indicators
  • Firewall list (EDL, text): https://api.ismalicious.com/edl/cve/CVE-2019-11231?format=txt
  • CSV export: https://api.ismalicious.com/edl/cve/CVE-2019-11231?format=csv
  • TAXII collection of exploited CVEs
  • The EDL and CSV take an API key on the Pro plan.

Versions per branch

NVD
Get-simple getsimple cms
BranchAffectedFixed in
3.3≤ 3.3.15no fix published

as publishedRanges as NVD and OSV publish them; a distribution’s build can be fixed under an older number.

Fix

No fix published by the sources we read yet. NVD record

Detection

read 2026-11-03 22:42 UTC
Nuclei template
none so far
ProjectDiscovery
Exploit-DB
EDB-46880
Exploit-DB
Proof-of-concept repositories
1 repository, unverifiedakincibor/CVE-2019-11231-PoC
PoC-in-GitHub
Metasploit modules
1 moduleexploit/multi/http/getsimplecms_unauth_code_execrank: excellentModule metadata: Metasploit Framework, © Rapid7, Inc., BSD-3-Clause.
Metasploit Framework

Sources

Identifiers

Technical details

CVSS v3 Vector
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Published
2019-05-22
Last Modified
2026-06-17
NVD status
Modified

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2019-11231?

An issue was discovered in GetSimple CMS through 3.3.15. insufficient input sanitation in the theme-edit.php file allows upload of files with arbitrary content (PHP code, for example). This vulnerability is triggered by an authenticated user; however, authentication can be bypassed. According to the official documentation for installation step 10, an admin is required to upload all the files, including the .htaccess files, and run a health check. However, what is overlooked is that the Apache HTTP Server by default no longer enables the AllowOverride directive, leading to data/users/admin.xml password exposure. The passwords are hashed but this can be bypassed by starting with the data/other/authorization.xml API key. This allows one to target the session state, since they decided to roll their own implementation. The cookie_name is crafted information that can be leaked from the frontend (site name and version). If a someone leaks the API key and the admin username, then they can bypass authentication. To do so, they need to supply a cookie based on an SHA-1 computation of this known information. The vulnerability exists in the admin/theme-edit.php file. This file checks for forms submissions via POST requests, and for the csrf nonce. If the nonce sent is correct, then the file provided by the user is uploaded. There is a path traversal allowing write access outside the jailed themes directory root. Exploiting the traversal is not necessary because the .htaccess file is ignored. A contributing factor is that there isn't another check on the extension before saving the file, with the assumption that the parameter content is safe. This allows the creation of web accessible and executable files with arbitrary content.

Is CVE-2019-11231 actively exploited?

Active exploitation of CVE-2019-11231 has not been confirmed. Its EPSS score was 71.6% on 2026-11-03, the estimated probability of exploitation in the next 30 days.

What is the CVSS score for CVE-2019-11231?

CVE-2019-11231 has a CVSS v3 base score of 9.8 (CRITICAL severity), with vector string CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H.

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