‘Highly Critical’ Unpatched Zero-Day Flaw Discovered In Oracle WebLogic

Apr 25, 2019

A team of cybersecurity researchers today published a post
warning enterprises of an unpatched, highly critical zero-day
vulnerability in Oracle WebLogic server application that
some attackers might have already started exploiting in the wild.

Oracle WebLogic is a scalable, Java-based multi-tier enterprise
application server that allows businesses to quickly deploy new
products and services on the cloud. It’s popular across both, cloud
environment and conventional environments.

Oracle WebLogic application reportedly contains a critical
deserialization remote code execution vulnerability that affects
all versions of the software, which can be triggered if the
“wls9_async_response.war” and “wls-wsat.war” components are
enabled.

The vulnerability, spotted ^[1] by the researchers from
KnownSec 404, allows attackers to remotely execute arbitrary
commands on the affected servers just by sending a specially
crafted HTTP request—without requiring any authorization.

“Since the WAR package has a defect in deserializing the input
information, the attacker can obtain the authority of the target
server by sending a carefully constructed malicious HTTP request,
and execute the command remotely without authorization,” explains ^[2] Chinese National
Information Security Vulnerability Sharing Platform (CNVD).

The researchers also shared details of the zero-day
vulnerability, tracked as CNVD-C-2019-48814, with the Oracle’s
team, but the company has not yet released a patch. The affected
Oracle WebLogic versions are as follows:

WebLogic 10.X
WebLogic 12.1.3

According to the ZoomEye ^[3] cyberspace search
engine, more than 36,000 WebLogic servers are publicly accessible
on the Internet, though it’s unknown how many of these have the
vulnerable components enabled.
A maximum number of Oracle WebLogic servers are deployed in the
United States and China, with a lesser number in Iran, Germany,
India, and so on.

Since Oracle releases security updates every three months and
had already released a Critical Patch
Update ^[4] just this month, this
zero-day issue is unlikely to be patched anytime soon (i.e., not
before July), unless the company decides to roll out an out-of-band
security update.

So, until the company releases an update to patch the
vulnerability, server administrators are highly recommended to
prevent their systems from exploitation by changing either of the
two following settings:

Finding and deleting wls9_async_response.war, wls-wsat.war and
restarting the Weblogic service, or
Preventing access to the /_async/* and /wls-wsat/* URL paths
via access policy control.

Since Oracle WebLogic servers are an often target of attackers,
there will be no surprise if attackers have already started
exploiting this zero-day and then use vulnerable servers for their
nefarious purposes.

References

^{^}
spotted
(medium.com)
^{^}
explains
(www.cnvd.org.cn)
^{^}
ZoomEye
(www.zoomeye.org)
^{^}
Critical Patch Update
(www.oracle.com)

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OWASP TOP !0

Injection. Injection flaws, such as SQL, NoSQL, OS, and LDAP injection, occur when untrusted data is sent to an interpreter as part of a command or query. The attacker’s hostile data can trick the interpreter into executing unintended commands or accessing data without proper authorization. Broken Authentication. Application functions related to authentication and session management are often implemented incorrectly, allowing attackers to compromise passwords, keys, or session tokens, or to exploit other implementation flaws to assume other users’ identities temporarily or permanently. Sensitive Data Exposure. Many web applications and APIs do not properly protect sensitive data, such as financial, healthcare, and PII. Attackers may steal or modify such weakly protected data to conduct credit card fraud, identity theft, or other crimes. Sensitive data may be compromised without extra protection, such as encryption at rest or in transit, and requires special precautions when exchanged with the browser. XML External Entities (XXE). Many older or poorly configured XML processors evaluate external entity references within XML documents. External entities can be used to disclose internal files using the file URI handler, internal file shares, internal port scanning, remote code execution, and denial of service attacks. Broken Access Control. Restrictions on what authenticated users are allowed to do are often not properly enforced. Attackers can exploit these flaws to access unauthorized functionality and/or data, such as access other users’ accounts, view sensitive files, modify other users’ data, change access rights, etc. Security Misconfiguration. Security misconfiguration is the most commonly seen issue. This is commonly a result of insecure default configurations, incomplete or ad hoc configurations, open cloud storage, misconfigured HTTP headers, and verbose error messages containing sensitive information. Not only must all operating systems, frameworks, libraries, and applications be securely configured, but they must be patched/upgraded in a timely fashion. Cross-Site Scripting XSS. XSS flaws occur whenever an application includes untrusted data in a new web page without proper validation or escaping, or updates an existing web page with user-supplied data using a browser API that can create HTML or JavaScript. XSS allows attackers to execute scripts in the victim’s browser which can hijack user sessions, deface web sites, or redirect the user to malicious sites. Insecure Deserialization. Insecure deserialization often leads to remote code execution. Even if deserialization flaws do not result in remote code execution, they can be used to perform attacks, including replay attacks, injection attacks, and privilege escalation attacks. Using Components with Known Vulnerabilities. Components, such as libraries, frameworks, and other software modules, run with the same privileges as the application. If a vulnerable component is exploited, such an attack can facilitate serious data loss or server takeover. Applications and APIs using components with known vulnerabilities may undermine application defenses and enable various attacks and impacts. Insufficient Logging & Monitoring. Insufficient logging and monitoring, coupled with missing or ineffective integration with incident response, allows attackers to further attack systems, maintain persistence, pivot to more systems, and tamper, extract, or destroy data. Most breach studies show time to detect a breach is over 200 days, typically detected by external parties rather than internal processes or monitoring.

‘Highly Critical’ Unpatched Zero-Day Flaw Discovered In Oracle WebLogic

References

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