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CVE-2019-7164 SQLAlchemy order_by Parameter SQL Injection Vulnerability – Feb 2019

Preface: SQLAlchemy is an open-source SQL toolkit and object-relational mapper (ORM) for the Python programming language released under the MIT License.

Who is their customer?
SQLAlchemy is used by organizations such as:
Yelp!
reddit
DropBox
The OpenStack Project
Survey Monkey

Modern programming languages are almost all object-oriented. While most object-oriented languages offer developer benefits such as componentization of code, ease of maintenance, possibility of reuse. This is the fact that they need for an OR mapper.

Vulnerability detail: SQLAlchemy through 1.2.17 and 1.3.x through 1.3.0b2 allows SQL Injection via the order_by parameter.

Remedy:
SQLAlchemy has released a software updates at the following link:

https://github.com/sqlalchemy/sqlalchemy/releases

Microsoft IIS web server design weakness – causes resources exhaustion (20th Feb 2019)

Preface: Many companies do not plan to use the Microsoft IIS web server until MS SharePoint is born.

MS SharePoint baseline design: If you decide to use SharePoint, IIS web server will be work with you forever. Indeed that SharePoint products are popular. And such away let people forget about IIS web server weakness. Perhaps most of the design architect conduct the preventive control to avoid the risk already. They install a proxy server in front of IIS.

Doubt: If you have proxy server in front of IIS web server. Do you jeopardize by this vulnerability?
Perhaps your proxy will be reduce the risk. But for the long run. Schedule to do the patching.

Below is the official announcement by Microsoft.
ADV190005 – Guidance to adjust HTTP/2 SETTINGS frames

https://portal.msrc.microsoft.com/en-us/security-guidance/advisory/ADV190005

Cisco HyperFlex Software Unauthenticated Root Access Vulnerability (CVE-2019-1664) – 20th Feb 2019

Preface: HyperFlex is Cisco’s hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) platform. It enable centralized management and enhanced operation efficiency.

Vulnerability detail:
The vulnerability resides in the hxterm service of the Cisco HyperFlex software package and it can “allow an unauthenticated, local attacker to gain root access to all nodes in the cluster, said Cisco.

If the following occurs:
You may login to the HX Data Platform command line interface in the Storage Controller VM in the following ways:
From a browser, a CLI terminal (SSH) and HX Connect Web CLI page.

OpenSSH can forward TCP sockets and UNIX domain sockets. If privilege separation is disabled, then on the server side, the forwarding is handled by a child of sshd that has root privileges. If an attacker who is permitted to log in as a normal user over SSH (using “ssh -L”). It can effectively connect to non-abstract unix domain sockets with root privileges.

Remedy: https://tools.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-20190220-chn-root-access

Security Focus – CVE-2018-13888

Preface: This design flaw has attracted me. Perhaps the supplier has no formal remediation solution yet. But the impact of this vulnerability seems to be broad!

Vulnerability detail: There is potential for memory corruption in the RIL daemon due to the following reason.
The location of dereference of memory is outside the allocated array length in RIL.

Meaning of “dereference” (common criteria):
The dereference operator or indirection operator, sometimes denoted by “*” (i.e. an asterisk), is a unary operator (i.e. one with a single operand) found in C-like languages that include pointer variables.

Affected products: Snapdragon Auto, Snapdragon Consumer IOT, Snapdragon Industrial IOT, Snapdragon Mobile, Snapdragon Wearables in versions MDM9206, MDM9607, MDM9635M, MDM9650, MSM8909W, SD 210/SD 212/SD 205, SD 425, SD 427, SD 430, SD 435, SD 439 / SD 429, SD 450, SD 625, SD 636, SD 650/52, SD 675, SD 712 / SD 710 / SD 670, SD 820A, SD 835, SD 845 / SD 850, SD 855, SDM439, SDM630, SDM660, ZZ_QCS605.

Official announcement – Not found in the bulletins yet : https://www.qualcomm.com/company/product-security/bulletins

CVE-2018-19018: Omron CX-Supervisor security alert! – Feb 2019

Preface: CX-Supervisor is dedicated to the design and operation of PC visualization and machine control in Omron controller applications.

Technical background: Configuring CX supervisor in OPC and DDE is extremely simple if you have your DDE and OPC server with the SCADA package. CX supervisor contains a large number of predefined functions and libraries, and even very complex applications can be generated with a powerful programming language or VBScript.

Vulnerability detail: CX-Supervisor (Versions 3.42 and prior) has an vulnerability occurs. In technical aspect, we so called access of uninitialized pointer.
That is if the uninitialized pointer is used as a function call, then arbitrary functions could be invoked. If an attacker can influence the portion of uninitialized memory that is contained in the pointer, this weakness could be leveraged to execute code or perform other attacks.

What is the best practice for an pointer?
The best way is setting it to NULL if it doesn’t point to anything.

Vendor announcement (see below url). But it did not mentioned this CVE yet! http://iotsecuritynews.com/omron-cx-supervisor-update-a/

Linux Kernel before 4.20.8 kvm_ioctl_create_device Use-After-Free Vulnerability – Feb 2019

Preface: Linus Torvalds, he is the principal developer of the Linux kernel. Many Linux distributions and operating systems are based on Linus Torvalds design foundation.

Synopsis: The module (virt/kvm/kvm_main.c) enables machines with Intel VT-x extensions to run virtual machines without emulation or binary translation. The module (virt/kvm/kvm_main.c) enables machines with Intel VT-x extensions to run virtual machines without emulation or binary translation. However a vulnerability occurs in the kvm_ioctl_create_device function of the Linux Kernel.

Details: The vulnerability exists due to a race condition that causes the kvm_ioctl_create_device function.
Affected software: kvm_main.c source code file

Impact: A successful exploit could trigger a use-after-free condition vulnerability. Thus causes the targeted virtual machine crash ( DoS condition). Besides, a successful exploit could allow the attacker to gain elevated privileges on a targeted system.

Remedy action: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/virt/kvm/kvm.git/commit/?id=cfa39381173d5f969daf43582c95ad679189cbc9

About Linux kernel flaw (CVE-2018-5391) – Cisco information update

Preface: Cisco provide status update on CVE-2018-5391 on 18th Feb 2019 , it is the follow up action for Linux kernel flaw announced August last year.

Synopsis: A decade ago, we said that the vulnerabilities of Microsoft windows will be jeopardize the IT world. Perhaps this statement not suitable today because Linux and open sources application encountered risks in frequent.

Vulnerability: From technical point of view, this flaw is easy exploit by attacker. They can send a packet trigger time and calculation expensive fragment reassembly algorithms overload the CPU power.

Don’t neglect this vulnerability:
Perhaps you say that your IPS can filter such malicious attack. The specify product has been patched. So your campus will be secure. But Linux base platform of machines are common today in your IT infrastructure. What if similar of attack is a insider threat. What’s the result?

Cisco official announcement – 18th Feb 2019 https://tools.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-20180824-linux-ip-fragment

Do we really need cryptocurrency or bitcoin?

Preface: A new survey out of China shows surging interest in the bitcoin and cryptocurrency, with many keen to invest in crypto in the future – said Forbes News.

Synopsis: The behaviour of human relies on banknotes perhaps will be replaced by another style of method substitution soon. It is hard to say that bitcoin is the substitution. But the new generation of technologies can tell. Retrospectively at the decades after the Second World War. The industrial civilization on Earth driven economic growth. Whereby it create a motivation power to payment industry. For instance Telex and SWIFT payment system. As a matter of fact, we have to admit that electronic payment become a the trend in future. As a matter of fact cryptocurrency or blockchain technology is on the way integrate to modern business world.

Prediction: On Feb 2019, JPMorgan became the first major United States bank to introduce its own digital token for real-world use (see below url).
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/14/business/dealbook/jpmorgan-cryptocurrency-bitcoin.html
Besides, the initiatives of smart city construction around the world. And believe that old fashion of payment concept and architecture should be replaced!

CVE-2019-7304 – Canonical snapd Local Privilege Escalation Vulnerability – 15th Feb 2019

Preface: Why REST so popular? REST can be used over nearly any protocol, when used for web APIs it typically takes advantage of HTTP.

Canonical snapd technical features: Snap is a software deployment and package management system.It capable to deliver and update your app on any Linux distribution for desktop, cloud, and Internet of Things.

Vulnerability occurred:

  1. Creating a file that contains uid=0 in its name: /tmp/ktgolhtvdk;uid=0;
  2. Binding to socket file – After a UNIX domain socket is created, you must bind the socket to a unique file path by using the bind function.
  3. Then using it to initiate a connection to the snapd socket.
  4. Overwrite the previous user identifier (UID) after the string is parsed and appear to the snapd daemon as a root user.
  5. Allow the attacker to create a new local user with root privileges using the API’s POST /v2/create-user function.

Vendor Announcements: Canonical has released software updates at the following link.

https://github.com/snapcore/snapd/releases

VMware announcement – they resolve mishandled file descriptor vulnerability in runc container runtime (15th Feb 2019)

Preface: Docker containers can be created in VMware. Therefore, VMware and Docker can work together. Therefore, they are not just competitors.

Vulnerability background: Docker announce on 12th Feb 2019 that they are vulnerable for malicious attack. The vulnerability allows a malicious container to overwrite the host runc binary and thus gain root-level code execution on the host.

Impact:
The attacker could trick a user with these permissions into deploying a malicious container or running docker exec for them.

Remedy: VMware product updates resolve mishandled file descriptor vulnerability in runc container runtime (CVE-2019-5736) . For more details, please refer official details shown below: https://www.vmware.com/security/advisories/VMSA-2019-0001.html

Conclusion: VMware is committed to work with the community to help establish common, open standards and specifications for containers on Jul 2017. I think such vulnerability also has impact to Stateful Containers on vSphere with the Orchestrator architecture. Therefore may have announcement will be posted soon!