Privilege escalation in Apache Tomcat

1) Permissions, Privileges, and Access Controls

EUVDB-ID: #VU25000

Risk: Low

CVSSv3.1: 4.8 [CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N/E:U/RL:O/RC:C]

CVE-ID: CVE-2019-12418

CWE-ID: CWE-264 - Permissions, Privileges, and Access Controls

Exploit availability: No

Description

The vulnerability allows a local user to escalate privileges on the system.

The vulnerability exists due to the local user without access to the Tomcat process or configuration files is able to manipulate the RMI registry to perform a man-in-the-middle attack to capture user names and passwords used to access the JMX interface.

Successful vulnerability exploitation requires that Apache Tomcat is configured with the JMX Remote Lifecycle Listener.

Mitigation

Install updates from vendor's website.

Vulnerable software versions

Apache Tomcat: 7.0.0 - 9.0.28

External links

http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2020-01/msg00013.html
http://lists.apache.org/thread.html/43530b91506e2e0c11cfbe691173f5df8c48f51b98262426d7493b67%40%3Cannounce.tomcat.apache.org%3E
http://seclists.org/bugtraq/2019/Dec/43
http://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20200107-0001/
http://support.f5.com/csp/article/K10107360?utm_source=f5support&utm_medium=RSS
http://www.debian.org/security/2019/dsa-4596

Q & A

Can this vulnerability be exploited remotely?

No. This vulnerability can be exploited locally. The attacker should have authentication credentials and successfully authenticate on the system.

How the attacker can exploit this vulnerability?

The attacker would have to send a specially crafted request to the affected application in order to exploit this vulnerability.

The attacker would have to login to the system and perform certain actions in order to exploit this vulnerability.

Is there known malware, which exploits this vulnerability?

No. We are not aware of malware exploiting this vulnerability.