Quantum Secular Labs / Blog / Advisories

CVE-2017-6972: Alienvault Ossim: Improper Check for Dropped Privileges

CVE-2017-6972 is rated critical with a CVSS v3.0 base score of 9.8 and affects Alienvault Ossim, along with 1 other product in NVD’s configuration data. Per its scoring, it can be exploited over the network, without authentication, without any user interaction. The scored impact on confidentiality, integrity and availability is the highest available.

Vulnerability description

AlienVault USM and OSSIM before 5.3.7 and NfSen before 1.3.8 have an error in privilege dropping and unnecessarily execute the NfSen Perl code as root, aka AlienVault ID ENG-104945, a different vulnerability than CVE-2017-6970 and CVE-2017-6971.

Severity breakdown

CVSS v3.0 9.8: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

  • Attack vector: Network. Exploitable remotely over the network, with no need for local or physical access.
  • Attack complexity: Low. No special conditions; the attack can be repeated reliably.
  • Privileges required: None. No account or prior access is needed.
  • User interaction: None. No action from any user is needed.
  • Scope: Unchanged. Impact stays within the vulnerable component.
  • Confidentiality impact: High. Total loss of confidentiality; sensitive data can be fully disclosed.
  • Integrity impact: High. Total loss of integrity; data or system state can be fully modified.
  • Availability impact: High. Total loss of availability; the component can be shut down.

Underlying weakness

CWE-273: Improper Check for Dropped Privileges

The product attempts to drop privileges but does not check or incorrectly checks to see if the drop succeeded.

Affected products

  • Alienvault Ossim: up to and including 5.3.6
  • Nfsen: up to and including 1.3.7
  • Alienvault Unified Security Management: up to and including 5.3.6

References