CVE-2020-1693

Description

A flaw was found in Spacewalk where it was vulnerable to XML internal entity attacks via the /rpc/api endpoint. An unauthenticated remote attacker could use this flaw to retrieve the content of certain files and trigger a denial of service, or in certain circumstances, execute arbitrary code on the Spacewalk server.

Statement

This flaw was rated Medium in the context of Red Hat Satellite v.5, because it does not allow remote code execution, and because of the limitation imposed when retrieving file content.

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).

The following CVSS metrics and score provided are preliminary and subject to review.

CVSS v3 Score Breakdown

Red HatNVDcve.org
Base Score8.69.8N/A
Attack VectorNetworkNetworkN/A
Attack ComplexityLowLowN/A
Privileges RequiredNoneNoneN/A
User InteractionNoneNoneN/A
ScopeUnchangedUnchangedN/A
ConfidentialityHighHighN/A
Integrity ImpactLowHighN/A
Availability ImpactLowHighN/A

Vector

Red Hat: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:L/A:L

NVD: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Understanding the Weakness (CWE)

Confidentiality

Technical Impact: Read Application Data; Read Files or Directories

If the attacker is able to include a crafted DTD and a default entity resolver is enabled, the attacker may be able to access arbitrary files on the system. By submitting an XML file that defines an external entity with a file:// URI, an attacker can cause the processing application to read the contents of a local file. For example, a URI such as "file:///c:/winnt/win.ini" designates (in Windows) the file C:\Winnt\win.ini, or file:///etc/passwd designates the password file in Unix-based systems. Once the content of the URI is read, it is fed back into the application that is processing the XML. This application may echo back the data (e.g., in an error message), thereby exposing the file contents.

Integrity

Technical Impact: Bypass Protection Mechanism

An attacker may supply a crafted DTD using URIs with schemes such as http://, forcing the application to make outgoing HTTP requests to servers that the attacker cannot reach directly, which can be used to bypass firewall restrictions; hide the source of attacks such as port scanning; or otherwise leverage the server's trust relationship with other entities.

Availability

Technical Impact: DoS: Resource Consumption (CPU); DoS: Resource Consumption (Memory)

The product could consume excessive CPU cycles or memory using a URI that points to a large file, or a device that always returns data such as /dev/random. Alternately, the URI could reference a file that contains many nested or recursive entity references to further slow down parsing.

Acknowledgements

Red Hat would like to thank Thibaut Zonca for reporting this issue.

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