Category Archives: Potential Risk of CVE

An issue was discovered in the sized-chucks crate through 0.6.2 for Rust. Software developer should be careful when make use of paypal-rs. (19-09-2020)

Preface: Companies large and small are using Rust in production all over the world, including Mozilla, Dropbox, npm, Postmates, Braintree and others.

Vulnerability details: An issue was discovered in the sized-chucks crate through 0.6.2 for Rust CVE-2020-25791…CVE-2020-25796.
Chunk:
– Array size is not checked when constructed with unit() and pair()
– Array size is not checked when constructed with From<InlineArray<A, T>>.
– Clone and insert_from are not panic-safe (memory safety issues)
InlineArray:
– Generates unaligned references for types with a large alignment requirement.

Rust does not implement Default for all arrays because it does not have non-type polymorphism. Rust does not implement Default for all arrays because it does not have non-type polymorphism. If the design do not contain check array mechanism fo constructing structures (“structs”) by specify type. Perhaps there is no proof of concept to exploit this vulnerability in the moment. However it looks that it provides a way for attacker exploit this design limitation in future. In the moment, it require to waiting for the developer do the remediation.

Should you have doubt for use the NFC on your android phone? (CVE-2020-0374 -17th Sep 2020)

Preface: The popularity of NFC mobile payments is owed to its ease of use and improved security options. Near-field communication (NFC) enables smartphones to exchange data and function as a payment device. It stores the customer’s credit card details and allows the user to pay at NFC POS terminals through smartphones.

Vulnerability details: In NFC, there is a possible permission bypass due to an unsafe “PendingIntent”. This could lead to local escalation of privilege with User execution privileges needed. User interaction is not needed for exploitation.

By giving a “PendingIntent” to another application, you are granting it the right to perform the operation you have specified as if the other application was yourself (with the same permissions and identity). As such, you should be careful about how you build the “PendingIntent”: almost always, for example, the base Intent you supply should have the component name explicitly set to one of your own components, to ensure it is ultimately sent there and nowhere else.

Reference: A PendingIntent is a token that you give to a foreign application (e.g. NotificationManager, AlarmManager, Home Screen AppWidgetManager, or other 3rd party applications), which allows the foreign application to use your application’s permissions to execute a predefined piece of code.

Affected products: AndroidVersions – Android-11Android ID: A-156251602

CVE reference: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-0374

Predict the cause let PAN OS has vulnerability occurred (CVE-2020-2040) – 15th Sep 2020

Preface: The firewall does not display the Captive Portal web form to users until you Configure Authentication Policy rules that trigger authentication when users request services or applications.

Vulnerability details: A buffer overflow vulnerability in PAN-OS allows an unauthenticated attacker to disrupt system processes and potentially execute arbitrary code with root privileges by sending a malicious request to the Captive Portal or Multi-Factor Authentication interface.

When a program (or subroutine) executes, it has a certain area of memory set aside called a stack (used for storing dynamically allocated variables). The stack also stores a return address to the program that invoked it. This allows a return to the code that was executing before the subroutine was called.

The goal of a buffer overflow attack is to overwrite the area of the stack where the return address is stored. The overwritten data will contain a new memory address pointing to the code that give a way for attacker to execute arbitrary code with privileges.

Official announcement: https://security.paloaltonetworks.com/CVE-2020-2040

Homeland security urge that do not contempt CVE-2020-1472 – 14th Sep 2020 A new story to Overturn “Netlogon” crypto algorithm

Security Focus:
By sending a number of Netlogon messages in which various fields are filled with zeroes, an attacker can change the computer password of the domain controller that is stored in the AD (refer to Index 1). This can then be used to obtain domain admin credentials and then restore the original DC password.

Index 1: 0 xor 0 = 0 agian, all subsequent blocks fed to AES will be all-zero. And therefore 00 will keep being xorred to the next plaintext bytes.

Important notice by US Homeland Security:
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is aware of publicly available exploit code for CVE-2020-1472, an elevation of privilege vulnerability in Microsoft’s Netlogon. Although Microsoft provided patches for CVE-2020-1472 in August 2020, unpatched systems will be an attractive target for malicious actors. Attackers could exploit this vulnerability to obtain domain administrator access.

Reference: https://us-cert.cisa.gov/ncas/current-activity/2020/09/14/exploit-netlogon-remote-protocol-vulnerability-cve-2020-1472

CVE-2020-15802 – Bluetooth vulnerability can cause Bluetooth devices to be attacked by man in the middle, and Bluetooth 4.0/5.0 devices are all affected! (9th Sep 2020).

Preface: Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is a low power wireless communication technology that can be used over a short distance to enable smart devices to communicate. … Today, the majority of Android and iOS devices on the market incorporate BLE for communication and interaction with other devices.

Ref I: CTKD pairing allows the devices to pair once using either transport method while generating both the BR/EDR and LE Long Term Keys (LTK) without needing to pair a second time.
Ref II: Bonding: First, do Pairing to have a secure link, then exchange keys for the next time we meet, so that we don’t need to perform Pairing again to have a secure link.

Vulnerability details: Multiple devices supporting both Bluetooth BR/EDR and LE using Cross-Transport Key Derivation (CTKD) for pairing could allow a remote malicious user to conduct a man-in-the-middle attack.

Remedy:The affected devices include all products using Bluetooth 4.0 to 5.0. Bluetooth after version 5.1 will not be affected due to the addition of restrictions on CTKD.

Reference:https://kb.cert.org/vuls/id/589825

CVE-2020-9839 – MacOS cfprefsd Arbitrary File Write / Local Privilege Escalation (NVD Last Modified: 09/07/2020)

Synopsis: The hackers behind the scenes used different vulnerabilities to obtain private information from the iPhone. In fact, they built a complete iPhone vulnerability attack chain. And then use the vulnerability to obtain all unencrypted or APP data on the victim’s device and send it to the attacker’s server.

Technical details: According to below design definition.
XPCService – You can connect to an XPCService strictly through a name
Mach Service – You can also connect to a Mach Service strictly through a name
NSXPCEndpoint – Communicate between two application processes.
The design concept of “com[.]apple[.]cfprefsd[.]daemon” is an XPC service hosted by the cfprefsd daemon.

Vulnerability details: An application may be able to gain elevated privileges. The CFPreferencesSetAppValue function, which is reachable from most unsandboxed processes, can be exploited with a race condition in order to overwrite an arbitrary file as root.

Reference:https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-9839

Thomson Reuters Eikon version 4.0.42144 design weakness (9th Sep 2020)

Preface: NVD published date on 09/03/2020. Strongly believe that technical matter was resolved by vendor completely. However we should recording this issue in notes. As we know, hacker jump to client network will hide himself for a period of time. Sometimes such action cater for their data exfiltration activities or ….

Techincal background: Slogan of Thomson Reuters Eikon. Access an incredible depth and breadth of financial analysis data to make smarter decisions. Reuters Eikon is a financial data platform which includes data on financial markets, companies’ (especially listed companies’) financial data, financial news, macro data etc. The product is analogous to the Bloomberg Terminal aka “Open Bloomberg”. It allow client install the Eikon software on their company workstation.

Vulnerability details: The current file permissions of the directory C[:]\Program Files (x86)\Thomson Reuters)\Eikon allow users of the group Authenticated Users to modify files in the folder. As these files are executed by the service that runs with SYSTEM privileges, it is possible to escalate privileges and create a new user with administrator privileges.

If a user has write permission in a folder used by a service, he can replace the binary with a malicious one. When the service is restarted the malicious binary is executed with higher privileges. Please refer to the attached picture for details.

Since Reuters and related terminal will be installed in Investment bank or broker firm dealing room. Perhaps this is the area which lure the hacker interest. And is a typical example of insider threats.
For my point of view, apply advanced cyber security filter and scanning function in this area not a possible solution. It was because it will encounter false alarm and therefore interrupt the services. In order to avoid unknown incident happen in this place, SIEM + (Predictive analysis tools like Darktrace) are the appropriate solution.

Don’t underestimate low-risk vulnerabilities (CVE-2020-15709). A simple method can be circumvented in Linux. 5th Sep 2020

Preface: The current Linux desktop market share is between 1.74 – 2.18%, according to the usage share of operating systems. In April 2019, Linux’s desktop market share was estimated to be 1.63%. Of all Linux users, 38.2% use Ubuntu as of May 2019. 21.5% of users rely on Debian.

Background: PPA – Personal Package Archives allow you to upload Ubuntu source packages to be built and published as an apt repository by Launchpad.

Vulnerability details: Versions of add-apt-repository before 0.98.9.2, 0.96.24.32.14, 0.96.20.10, and 0.92.37.8ubuntu0.1~esm1, printed a PPA (personal package archive) description to the terminal as-is, which allowed PPA owners to provide ANSI terminal escapes to modify terminal contents in unexpected ways.

Design limitation: A terminal escape sequence is a special sequence of characters that is printed. If the terminal understands the sequence, it won’t display the character-sequence, but will perform some action. Please refer to the attached drawings for details.

Official reference: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-15709

CVE-2019-18847 (Something in your eyes): 3rd Sep 2020

Preface: On October 15, 2019, Tesla discovered, and responsibly disclosed, a vulnerability within Akamai’s Enterprise Application Access (EAA) client that allows privilege escalation and remote code execution (RCE) when an attacker is within privileged locations on a network.

Vulnerability details: Enterprise Access Client Auto-Updater allows for Remote Code Execution prior to version 2.0.1.

Possible ways: Perhaps attacker can mimic a email to inform client to update their software. Meanwhile the update server will be connected to attacker compromised host. If user not aware that it is a fake IdP portal. They will download EAAClient and install it locally. Since this software run in privileges level. As a result, attacker can compromise this device.

Impact: Attacker may understand vendor cloud collaboration security service have sensor and alarm. They can take another way round. Steal the data in compromised workstation and or on going activities.
Backdoor[.]Win32[.]Mokes was spread via the same campaign earlier in January.

Official announcement: August 25, 2020 9:45 AM – https://blogs.akamai.com/2020/08/enterprise-application-access-client-eaa-vulnerability-cve-2019-18847.html

CVE-2020-11984: About Apache HTTP server 2.4.32 to 2.4.44 mod_proxy_uwsgi (2nd Sep 2020)

Preface: uWSGI is a very active project with a fast release cycle. For this reason the code and the documentation maynot always be in sync.

Background: Currently there are three uwsgi-protocol related apache2 modules available. They are mod_uwsgi,mod_proxy_uwsgi and mod_Ruwsgi. uWSGI is often used for serving Python web applications in conjunction with web servers such as Cherokee and Nginx, which offer direct support for uWSGI’s native uwsgi protocol.

Vulnerability details: By sending a small amount of headers (length close to the LimitRequestFieldSize default value of 8190) through uWSGI open port.RCE against a standard UWSGI config is possible if an attacker can put a controlled name or value into “subprocess_env” that is longer than 0xFFFF bytes.
Remark: If UWSGI is explicitly configured in persistent mode (puwsgi), this can also be used to smuggle a second UWSGI request leading to remote code execution.(In its standard configuration UWSGI only supports a single request per connection, making request smuggling impossible).

Official announcement: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-11984

Remedy: CVE-2020-11984: Fixed an information disclosure bug in mod_proxy_uwsgi (bsc#1175074) – https://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2020-08/msg00068.html