CVE-2023-4959 is a Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability identified in Red Hat Quay 3, an enterprise container registry platform used for storing and distributing container images. The vulnerability resides in the config-editor page, which is responsible for configuring the Quay instance. CSRF attacks exploit the trust a web application places in a user's browser by tricking the user into submitting unauthorized requests to the application from a malicious site. In this case, an attacker can coerce a victim’s browser into sending attacker-controlled requests to the config-editor page without the victim’s consent or knowledge. This can lead to unauthorized reconfiguration of the Quay instance, including the addition of users with administrative privileges. The vulnerability does not require prior authentication (PR:N) but does require user interaction (UI:R), such as visiting a malicious website. The CVSS vector indicates network attack vector (AV:N), low attack complexity (AC:L), no confidentiality or integrity impact (C:N/I:N), but a high impact on availability (A:H), suggesting that the primary risk is disruption or denial of service through misconfiguration. Although no known exploits are currently reported in the wild, the potential for privilege escalation and service disruption makes this a significant concern for organizations relying on Red Hat Quay 3 for container image management. The vulnerability was published on September 15, 2023, and no patches or mitigations were explicitly linked in the provided data, indicating that organizations should monitor Red Hat advisories closely for updates.

For European organizations, this vulnerability poses a risk primarily to the availability and operational integrity of container image registries managed via Red Hat Quay 3. Successful exploitation could allow attackers to alter configurations, potentially causing service disruptions or unauthorized administrative access, which could cascade into broader security incidents such as unauthorized container deployments or privilege escalations. Organizations heavily reliant on containerized environments for development, testing, or production workloads may experience downtime or compromised container image integrity. Given the critical role of container registries in modern DevOps pipelines, this could impact software delivery timelines and operational continuity. Additionally, unauthorized administrative access could lead to further lateral movement within the network or exposure of sensitive container images. The lack of confidentiality and integrity impact in the CVSS vector suggests data leakage or tampering is less likely, but the availability impact remains significant. European organizations must consider the risk in the context of compliance with regulations such as GDPR, where service availability and integrity are important for operational resilience.

To mitigate CVE-2023-4959, organizations should implement the following specific measures: 1) Apply any available patches or updates from Red Hat promptly once released to address the CSRF vulnerability in Quay 3. 2) Enforce strict CSRF protections by ensuring that anti-CSRF tokens are implemented and validated on all state-changing requests, especially on the config-editor page. 3) Restrict access to the Quay management interface to trusted networks and users via network segmentation and firewall rules to reduce exposure to external CSRF attempts. 4) Implement Content Security Policy (CSP) headers and SameSite cookie attributes to limit cross-origin request capabilities from untrusted domains. 5) Educate users about the risks of visiting untrusted websites while authenticated to critical services like Quay. 6) Monitor logs for unusual configuration changes or administrative user additions to detect potential exploitation attempts. 7) Consider multi-factor authentication (MFA) for administrative access to add an additional security layer, even though the vulnerability does not require authentication. 8) Regularly audit container registry configurations and user privileges to quickly identify unauthorized changes. These targeted actions go beyond generic advice by focusing on the specific attack vector and operational context of Red Hat Quay 3.