CVE-2019-12418
Description
A privilege escalation flaw was found in Tomcat when the JMX Remote Lifecycle Listener was enabled. A local attacker without access to the Tomcat process or configuration files could be able to manipulate the RMI registry to perform a man-in-the-middle attack. The attacker could then capture user names and passwords used to access the JMX interface and gain complete control over the Tomcat instance.
Statement
This flaw did not affect the versions of tomcat as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, as they did not include JMX Remote Lifecycle Listener, which was introduced in a later version of the package.
pki-servlet-engine has been obsoleted by Tomcat in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.9 and later. Therefore no additional fixes would be made available for the servlet engine.
Mitigation
Disable JMX Remote if monitoring is only needed locally and there is no need to monitor Tomcat remotely. If JMX Remote is required and cannot be disabled, then use the built-in remote JMX facilities provided by the JVM.
Please note that JMX Remote Lifecycle Listener is now deprecated and may be removed from both Tomcat 7 [1] and Tomcat 9 [2] after 2020-12-31.
[1] https://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-7.0-doc/config/listeners.html#Deprecated_Implementations
[2] https://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-9.0-doc/config/listeners.html#Deprecated_Implementations
Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details
Info alert:Important note
CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authority (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications).
CVSS v3 Score Breakdown
| Red Hat | NVD | cve.org | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base Score | 7.4 | 7 | N/A |
| Attack Vector | Local | Local | N/A |
| Attack Complexity | High | High | N/A |
| Privileges Required | None | Low | N/A |
| User Interaction | None | None | N/A |
| Scope | Unchanged | Unchanged | N/A |
| Confidentiality | High | High | N/A |
| Integrity Impact | High | High | N/A |
| Availability Impact | High | High | N/A |
Vector
Red Hat: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Understanding the Weakness (CWE)
Other
Technical Impact: Varies by Context
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