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Technical Advisory – SonicWall Global Management System (GMS) & Analytics – Multiple Critical Vulnerabilities

24 August 2023

By Rich Warren

Multiple Unauthenticated SQL Injection Issues Security Filter Bypass – CVE-2023-34133

Title: Multiple Unauthenticated SQL Injection Issues   Security Filter Bypass
Risk: 9.8 (Critical) - CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
Versions Affected: GMS Virtual Appliance 9.3.2-SP1 and earlier, GMS Windows 9.3.2-SP1 and earlier, Analytics 2.5.0.4-R7 and earlier
CVE Identifier: CVE-2023-34133
Authors: Richard Warren , Sean Morland 

Description

The GMS web application was found to be vulnerable to numerous SQL injection issues. Additionally, security mechanisms that were in place to help prevent against SQL Injection attacks could be bypassed.

Impact

An unauthenticated attacker could exploit these issues to extract sensitive information, such as credentials, reset user passwords, bypass authentication, and compromise the underlying device.

Web Service Authentication Bypass – CVE-2023-34124

Title: Web Service Authentication Bypass
Risk: 9.4 (Critical) - CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:L/A:H
Versions Affected: GMS Virtual Appliance 9.3.2-SP1 and earlier, GMS Windows 9.3.2-SP1 and earlier, Analytics 2.5.0.4-R7 and earlier
CVE Identifier: CVE-2023-34124
Authors: Richard Warren , Sean Morland 

Description

The authentication mechanism used by the Web Services application did not adequately perform authentication checks, as no secret information was required to perform authentication.

The authentication mechanism employed by the GMS /ws application used a non-secret value when performing HTTP digest authentication. An attacker could easily supply this information, allowing them to gain unauthorised access to the application and call arbitrary Web Service methods.

Impact

An attacker with knowledge of authentication mechanism would be able to generate valid authentication codes for the GMS Web Services application, and subsequently call arbitrary methods. A number of these Web Service methods were found to be vulnerable to additional issues, such as arbitrary file read and write (see CVE-2023-34135, CVE-2023-34129 and CVE-2023-34134). Therefore, this issue could lead to the complete compromise of the host.

Predictable Password Reset Key – CVE-2023-34123

Title: Password Hash Read via Web Service
Risk: 7.5 (High) - CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
Versions Affected: GMS Virtual Appliance 9.3.2-SP1 and earlier, GMS Windows 9.3.2-SP1 and earlier, Analytics 2.5.0.4-R7 and earlier
CVE Identifier: CVE-2023-34123
Authors: Richard Warren , Sean Morland 

Description

The GMS /appliance application uses a hardcoded key value to generate password reset keys. This hardcoded value does not change between installs. Furthermore, additional information used during password reset code calculation is non-secret and can be discovered from an unauthenticated perspective.

An attacker with knowledge of this information could generate their own password reset key to reset the administrator account password. Note that this issue is only exploitable in certain configurations. Specifically, if the device is registered, or if it is configured in “Closed Network” mode.

Impact

An attacker with knowledge of the hardcoded 3DES key used to validate password reset codes could generate their own password reset code to gain unauthorised, administrative access to the appliance. An attacker with unauthorised, administrative access to the appliance could exploit additional post-authentication vulnerabilities to achieve Remote Code Execution on the underlying device. Additionally, they could gain access to other devices managed by the GMS appliance.

CAS Authentication Bypass – CVE-2023-34137

Title: CAS Authentication Bypass
Risk: 9.4 (Critical) - CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:L/A:H 
Versions Affected: GMS Virtual Appliance 9.3.2-SP1 and earlier, GMS Windows 9.3.2-SP1 and earlier, Analytics 2.5.0.4-R7 and earlier
CVE Identifier: CVE-2023-34137
Authors: Richard Warren , Sean Morland 

Description

The authentication mechanism used by the CAS Web Service (exposed via /ws/cas) did not adequately perform authentication checks, as it used a hardcoded secret value to perform cryptographic authentication checks. The CAS Web Service validated authentication tokens by calculating the HMAC SHA-1 of the supplied username. However, the HMAC secret was static. As such, an attacker could calculate their own authentication tokens, allowing them to gain unauthorised access to the CAS Web Service.

Impact

An attacker with access to the application source code (for example, by downloading a trial VM), could discover the static value used for calculating HMACs – allowing them to generate their own authentication tokens. An attacker with the ability to generate their own authentication tokens would be able to make legitimate use of the CAS API, as well as exploit further vulnerabilities within this API; for example, SQL Injection – resulting in complete compromise of the underlying host.

Post-Authenticated Command Injection – CVE-2023-34127

Title: Post-Authenticated Command Injection
Risk: 8.8 (High) - CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Versions Affected: GMS Virtual Appliance 9.3.2-SP1 and earlier, GMS Windows 9.3.2-SP1 and earlier, Analytics 2.5.0.4-R7 and earlier
CVE Identifier: CVE-2023-34127
Authors: Richard Warren , Sean Morland 

Description

The GMS application was found to lack sanitization of user-supplied parameters when allowing users to search for log files on the system. This could allow an authenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code with root privileges.

Impact

An authenticated, administrative user can execute code as root on the underlying file system. For example, they could use this vulnerability to write a malicious cron job, web-shell, or stage a remote C2 payload. Note that whilst on its own this issue requires authentication, there were other issues identified (such as CVE-2023-34123) that could be chained with this vulnerability to exploit it from an initially unauthenticated perspective.

Password Hash Read via Web Service – CVE-2023-34134

Title: Password Hash Read via Web Service
Risk: 9.8 (Critical) - CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Versions Affected: GMS Virtual Appliance 9.3.2-SP1 and earlier, GMS Windows 9.3.2-SP1 and earlier, Analytics 2.5.0.4-R7 and earlier
CVE Identifier: CVE-2023-34134
Authors: Richard Warren , Sean Morland 

Description

An authenticated attacker can read the administrator password hash via a web service call.

Note that whilst this issue requires authentication, it can be chained with an authentication bypass to exploit the issue from an unauthenticated perspective.

Impact

This issue can be chained with CVE-2023-34124 to read the administrator password hash from an unauthenticated perspective. Following this, an attacker could launch further post-authentication attackers to achieve Remote Code Execution.

Post-Authenticated Arbitrary File Read via Backup File Directory Traversal – CVE-2023-34125

Title: Post-Authenticated Arbitrary File Read via Backup File Directory Traversal
Risk: 6.5 (Medium) - CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
Versions Affected: GMS Virtual Appliance 9.3.2-SP1 and earlier, GMS Windows 9.3.2-SP1 and earlier, Analytics 2.5.0.4-R7 and earlier
CVE Identifier: CVE-2023-34125
Authors: Richard Warren , Sean Morland 

Description

The GMS application was found to lack sanitization of user-supplied parameters when downloading backup files. This could allow an authenticated attacker to read arbitrary files from the underlying filesystem with root privileges.

Impact

An authenticated, administrative user can read any file on the underlying file system. For example, they could read the password database to retrieve user-passwords hashes, or other sensitive information. Note that whilst on its own this issue requires authentication, there were other issues identified (such as CVE-2023-34123) that could be chained with this vulnerability to exploit it from an initially unauthenticated perspective.

Post-Authenticated Arbitrary File Upload – CVE-2023-34126

Title: Post-Authenticated Arbitrary File Upload
Risk: 7.1 (High) - CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:H/A:N
Versions Affected: GMS Virtual Appliance 9.3.2-SP1 and earlier, GMS Windows 9.3.2-SP1 and earlier, Analytics 2.5.0.4-R7 and earlier
CVE Identifier: CVE-2023-34126
Authors: Richard Warren , Sean Morland 

Description

The GMS application was found to lack sanitization of user-supplied parameters when allowing users to upload files to the system. This could allow an authenticated upload files anywhere on the system with root privileges.

Impact

An authenticated, administrative user can upload files as root on the underlying file system. For example, they could use this vulnerability to upload a web-shell. Note that whilst on its own this issue requires authentication, there were other issues identified (such as CVE-2023-34124) that could be chained with this vulnerability to exploit it from an initially unauthenticated perspective.

Post-Authenticated Arbitrary File Write via Web Service (Zip Slip) – CVE-2023-34129

Title: Post-Authenticated Arbitrary File Write via Web Service (Zip Slip)
Risk: 7.1 (High) - CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:H/A:N
Versions Affected: GMS Virtual Appliance 9.3.2-SP1 and earlier, GMS Windows 9.3.2-SP1 and earlier, Analytics 2.5.0.4-R7 and earlier
CVE Identifier: CVE-2023-34126
Authors: Richard Warren , Sean Morland 

Description

A web service endpoint was found to be vulnerable to directory traversal whilst extracting a malicious ZIP file (a.k.a. ZipSlip). This could be exploited to write arbitrary files to any location on disk.

Impact

An authenticated attacker may be able to exploit this issue to write arbitrary files to any location on the underlying file system. These files would be written with root privileges. By writing arbitrary files, an attacker could achieve Remote Code Execution. Whilst this issue requires authentication, it could be chained with other issues, such as CVE-2023-34124 (Web Service Authentication Bypass), to exploit it from an initially unauthenticated perspective.

Post-Authenticated Arbitrary File Read via Web Service – CVE-2023-34135

Title: Post-Authenticated Arbitrary File Read via Web Service
Risk: 6.5 (Medium) - CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
Versions Affected: GMS Virtual Appliance 9.3.2-SP1 and earlier, GMS Windows 9.3.2-SP1 and earlier, Analytics 2.5.0.4-R7 and earlier 
CVE Identifier: CVE-2023-34135
Authors: Richard Warren , Sean Morland 

Description

A web service method allows an authenticated user to read arbitrary files from the underlying file system.

Impact

A remote attacker can read arbitrary files from the underlying file system with the privileges of the Tomcat server (root). When combined with CVE-2023-34124, this issue can allow an unauthenticated attacker to download any file of their choosing. For example, reading the /opt/GMSVP/data/auth.txt file to retrieve the administrator’s password hash.

Client-Side Hashing Function Allows Pass-the-Hash – CVE-2023-34132

Title: CAS Authentication Bypass
Risk: 4.9 (Medium) - CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N 
Versions Affected: GMS Virtual Appliance 9.3.2-SP1 and earlier, GMS Windows 9.3.2-SP1 and earlier, Analytics 2.5.0.4-R7 and earlier
CVE Identifier: CVE-2023-34132
Authors: Richard Warren , Sean Morland 

Description

The client-side hashing algorithm used during the logon was found to enable pass-the-hash attacks. As such, an attacker with knowledge of a user’s password hash could log in to the application without knowledge of the underlying plain-text password.

Impact

An attacker who is in possession of a user’s hashed password would be able to log in to the application without knowledge of the underlying plain-text password. By exploiting an issue such as CVE-2023-34134 (Password Hash Read via Web Service), an attacker could first read the user’s password hash, and then log in using that password hash, without ever having to know the underlying plain-text password.

Hardcoded Tomcat Credentials (Privilege Escalation) – CVE-2023-34128)

Title: Hardcoded Tomcat Credentials (Privilege Escalation)
Risk: 6.5 (Medium) - CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
Versions Affected: GMS Virtual Appliance 9.3.2-SP1 and earlier, GMS Windows 9.3.2-SP1 and earlier, Analytics 2.5.0.4-R7 and earlier
CVE Identifier: CVE-2023-34128
Authors: Richard Warren , Sean Morland 

Description

A number of plain-text credentials were found to be hardcoded both within the application source code and within the users.xml configuration file on the GMS appliance. These credentials did not change between installs and were found to be static. Therefore, an attacker who can decompile the application source code would easily be able to discover these credentials.

Impact

An attacker with access to the Tomcat manager application (via https://localhost/) would be able to utilise the appuser account credentials to gain code execution as the root user, by deploying a malicious WAR file. As the Tomcat manager application is only exposed to localhost by default, an attacker would require an SSRF vulnerability, or the ability to tunnel traffic to the Tomcat Manager port (through SOCKS over SSH, for example). However, this could also be exploited as local privilege escalation vector in the case where an attacker has gained low privileged access to the OS (e.g., via the postgres user or snwlcli users).

Unauthenticated File Upload – CVE-2023-34136

Title: Unauthenticated File Upload
Risk: 5.3 (Medium) - CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:L
Versions Affected: GMS Virtual Appliance 9.3.2-SP1 and earlier, GMS Windows 9.3.2-SP1 and earlier, Analytics 2.5.0.4-R7 and earlier
CVE Identifier: CVE-2023-34136
Authors: Richard Warren , Sean Morland 

Description

An unauthenticated user can upload an arbitrary file to a location not controlled by the attacker.

Impact

Whilst the location of the upload is not controllable by the attacker this vulnerability can be used in conjunction with other vulnerabilities, such as CVE-2023-34127 (Command Injection), to allow an attacker to upload a web-shell as the root user.

Additionally, there are several functions within the GMS application which execute .sh or .bat files from the Tomcat Temp directory. An attacker could upload a malicious script file which might later be executed by the GMS (during a firmware update, for example).

Unauthenticated Sensitive Information Leak – CVE-2023-34131

Title: Unauthenticated Sensitive Information Leak
Risk: 7.5 (High) - CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
Versions Affected: GMS Virtual Appliance 9.3.2-SP1 and earlier, GMS Windows 9.3.2-SP1 and earlier, Analytics 2.5.0.4-R7 and earlier
CVE Identifier: CVE-2023-34131
Authors: Richard Warren , Sean Morland 

Description

A number of pages were found to not require any form of authentication, which could allow an attacker to glean sensitive information about the device, such as serial numbers, internal IP addresses and host-names – which could be later used by an attacker as a prerequisite for further attacks.

Impact

An attacker could leak sensitive information such as the device serial number, which could be later used to inform further attacks. As an example, the serial number is required to exploit CVE-2023-34123 (Predictable Password Reset Key). An attacker can easily glean this information by making a simple request to the device, thus decreasing the complexity of such attacks.

Use of Outdated Cryptographic Algorithm with Hardcoded Key – CVE-2023-34130

Title: Unauthenticated Sensitive Information Leak
Risk: 5.3 (Medium) - CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
Versions Affected: GMS Virtual Appliance 9.3.2-SP1 and earlier, GMS Windows 9.3.2-SP1 and earlier, Analytics 2.5.0.4-R7 and earlier
CVE Identifier: CVE-2023-34130
Authors: Richard Warren , Sean Morland 

Description

The GMS application was found make use of a customised version of the Tiny Encryption Algorithm (TEA) to encrypt sensitive data. TEA is a legacy block-cipher which suffers from known weaknesses. It’s usage is discouraged in favour of AES, which provides enhanced security, is widely supported, and is included in most standard libraries (e.g. javax.crypto).

Additionally, the encryption key used by the application was found to be hardcoded within the application source code. This means that regardless of any known weakness in the encryption algorithm, or the method used to encrypt the data, an attacker with access to the source code will be able to decrypt any data encrypted with this key.

Impact

An attacker with access to the source code (for example, by downloading a trial VM), could easily retrieve the hardcoded TEA key. Using this key, the attacker could decrypt sensitive information hardcoded within the web application source code, which could aid in compromising the device.

Furthermore, by combining this issue with various other issues (such as authentication bypass and arbitrary file read), an attacker could retrieve and decrypt configuration files containing user passwords. This would ultimately allow an attacker to compromise both the application and underlying Operating System.

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Published date:  2023-08-24

Written by:  Richard Warren