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CVE Record

CVE-2017-9551: Mahara 15.04 before 15.04.14 and 16.04 before 16.04.8 and 16.10 before 16.10.5 and 17.04 before 17.04.3 are...

Mahara 15.04 before 15.04.14 and 16.04 before 16.04.8 and 16.10 before 16.10.5 and 17.04 before 17.04.3 are vulnerable to a user submitting potential dangerous payload, e.g. XSS code, to be saved as their name in the usr_registration table. The values are then emailed to the the user and administrator and if accepted become part of the new user's account.

UnknownCVSS not scoredNot KEV-listedUpdated
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Glexia's TakeAutomated analysismoderate

Security readout for executives and security teams

Plain-English summary

Older Mahara releases allowed a registering user to save dangerous content, such as XSS, in their name. That content could reach user and administrator emails, and if approved, become part of the account. The business risk is mainly account-management trust, administrator exposure, and stored content in identity fields.

Executive priority

Treat this as a targeted remediation item for any active Mahara estate. It is not supported as actively exploited by the supplied sources, but internet-facing registration workflows raise the practical priority because administrators may process attacker-supplied content.

Technical view

CVE-2017-9551 affects Mahara 15.04 before 15.04.14, 16.04 before 16.04.8, 16.10 before 16.10.5, and 17.04 before 17.04.3. User-controlled name values in usr_registration could store dangerous payloads, later used in emails and accepted account data. No CVSS or CWE is provided in the bundle.

Likely exposure

Exposure is limited to Mahara deployments running the listed vulnerable versions, especially where user registration and administrator approval workflows are enabled. The bundle does not identify affected packaged distributions, hosted services, or non-Mahara products.

Exploitation context

The source bundle does not show active exploitation, and KEV is false. Public information describes the vulnerability class and affected versions, but does not provide exploit prevalence, real-world incident evidence, or complete severity scoring.

Researcher notes

Evidence supports a stored XSS-style issue in registration name handling, but source detail is sparse. The affected version ranges are the strongest remediation anchor. Avoid assuming impact beyond emails, registration approval, and accepted account data unless confirmed in Mahara advisories or local testing.

Mitigation direction

  • Upgrade Mahara to the fixed version for the deployed release branch or later.
  • Check Mahara vendor guidance for any additional hardening or backport instructions.
  • Review registration and account-name handling for proper output encoding after upgrade.
  • If upgrade is delayed, reduce exposure of public registration where operationally possible.

Validation and detection

  • Inventory all Mahara instances and record their exact release versions.
  • Confirm no instance runs the vulnerable versions listed in the CVE description.
  • Review recent pending registrations for suspicious script-like content in name fields.
  • Verify administrator registration emails render names safely after remediation.
Prepared
Confidence
medium
Sources
4

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

These mappings and lookup hints may be relevant to the vulnerability behavior, CWE, affected product, or exposure path. Glexia-inferred context is not an official MITRE, ATT&CK, CWE, or CVE Program mapping.

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CVE-2017-9551 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
3Source 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/an/an/aListed
Weakness

CWE details

No CWE listed

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