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CVE Record

CVE-2016-9471: Revive Adserver before 3.2.5 and 4.0.0 suffers from Special Element Injection.

Revive Adserver before 3.2.5 and 4.0.0 suffers from Special Element Injection. Usernames weren't properly sanitised when creating users on a Revive Adserver instance. Especially, control characters were not filtered, allowing apparently identical usernames to co-exist in the system, due to the fact that such characters are normally ignored when an HTML page is displayed in a browser. The issue could have therefore been exploited for user spoofing, although elevated privileges are required to create users within Revive Adserver.

UnknownCVSS not scoredNot KEV-listedUpdated
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Glexia's TakeAutomated analysismoderate

Security readout for executives and security teams

Plain-English summary

Revive Adserver allowed privileged users to create usernames containing control characters. In a browser, those characters may be invisible, so two accounts could appear to have the same username. This could enable user spoofing and confuse audits, but the sources state elevated privileges are required to create users.

Executive priority

Prioritize remediation during normal security maintenance unless exposed administrative access or suspicious account activity exists. The main risk is trust and audit integrity inside the adserver, not unauthenticated takeover based on the provided evidence.

Technical view

CVE-2016-9471 is CWE-75 Special Element Injection in Revive Adserver before 3.2.5 and 4.0.0. Username input was not properly sanitized during user creation, especially for control characters. The issue could allow visually indistinguishable usernames to coexist and support spoofing within the application.

Likely exposure

Exposure is limited to Revive Adserver deployments running versions before 3.2.5 or 4.0.0, especially where multiple administrators or delegated user-management roles exist.

Exploitation context

The provided sources do not show active exploitation, and the CVE is not listed as KEV. Exploitation requires elevated privileges to create users in Revive Adserver, reducing broad external attack likelihood but increasing insider or compromised-admin risk.

Researcher notes

Evidence identifies improper username sanitization and control-character handling during account creation. Sources do not provide CVSS, broad impact details, or confirmed exploitation. Treat affected-version confirmation and account-review evidence as the key validation points.

Mitigation direction

  • Upgrade affected Revive Adserver deployments to 3.2.5, 4.0.0, or later.
  • Review vendor security advisory REVIVE-SA-2016-002 before applying changes.
  • Restrict user-creation privileges to trusted administrators only.
  • Review existing accounts for visually similar or unexpected duplicate usernames.

Validation and detection

  • Inventory Revive Adserver instances and record their exact versions.
  • Confirm no production instance runs a version before 3.2.5 or 4.0.0.
  • Audit administrator-created accounts for lookalike usernames.
  • Verify username validation rejects control characters in a safe test environment.
Prepared
Confidence
high
Sources
5

Public sources used

Generated from the cited source records. This long-tail analysis has not been individually reviewed by a named human.

Potential ATT&CK relevance

Conservative CVE-to-ATT&CK context

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ATT&CK lookup starting points

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cwe · low confidence lookup

CWE-75: Exact CWE lookup

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cve · low confidence lookup

CVE-2016-9471 mapping review

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Vulnerability profileCVE Program record
Severity
Unknown
CVSS
Not scored
Known Exploited
No
Published
Official CVE source material

CNA and ADP enrichment extracted from CVE v5

These fields come from the CVE record and ADP containers, not from Glexia's Take. They preserve time-varying source decisions such as CISA SSVC, KEV status, CVSS metrics, and provider references.

0CVSS vectors
0Timeline events
0ADP providers
4Source links

CVSS and timeline data

No CVSS vectors or timeline events were available in the normalized CVE source material.

Source materials

Affected products

Products and packages named in the record

VendorProductVersion / packageStatus
n/aRevive Adserver All versions before 3.2.5 and 4.0.0Revive Adserver All versions before 3.2.5 and 4.0.0Listed
Weakness

CWE details

CWE-75

CWE links open Glexia weakness intelligence pages with official CWE context, developer remediation guidance, and related CVE mappings.

CWE-75 · source CWE mapping

Failure to Sanitize Special Elements into a Different Plane (Special Element Injection)

Failure to Sanitize Special Elements into a Different Plane (Special Element Injection) represents a recurring weakness pattern that can create exploitable paths when design, validation, or implementation controls are missing.

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