CVE-2020-4040: CSRF issue on preview pages in Bolt CMS

Severity: medium (CVSS 4.3 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 1.8% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2020-06-08 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-352

Description

Bolt CMS before version 3.7.1 lacked CSRF protection in the preview generating endpoint. Previews are intended to be generated by the admins, developers, chief-editors, and editors, who are authorized to create content in the application. But due to lack of proper CSRF protection, unauthorized users could generate a preview. This has been fixed in Bolt 3.7.1

Affected products

bolt: before 3.7.1 — fixed in 3.7.1

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: bolt 3.7.1. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/158299/Bolt-CMS-3.7.0-XSS-CSRF-Shell-Upload.html
http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2020/Jul/4
https://github.com/bolt/bolt/commit/b42cbfcf3e3108c46a80581216ba03ef449e419f
https://github.com/bolt/bolt/pull/7853
https://github.com/bolt/bolt/security/advisories/GHSA-2q66-6cc3-6xm8
http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/158299/Bolt-CMS-3.7.0-XSS-CSRF-Shell-Upload.html
http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2020/Jul/4
https://github.com/bolt/bolt/commit/b42cbfcf3e3108c46a80581216ba03ef449e419f
https://github.com/bolt/bolt/pull/7853
https://github.com/bolt/bolt/security/advisories/GHSA-2q66-6cc3-6xm8

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