Layer Seven Security

Equifax Data Breach: Attackers Exploited an Unapplied Security Patch, not a Zero-Day Vulnerability

Layer Seven on September 16, 2017

On September 15, Equifax released a statement to confirm the initial attack vector that led to the compromise of personal information relating to 143 million consumers in the US, UK and Canada targeted an Apache Struts vulnerability within a web application that supports the organization’s online dispute portal. The patch for the vulnerability had been available since March but had not been applied by Equifax at the time the breach was detected on July 29. The patch was subsequently applied by Equifax but it was too late – the damage had been done.

Predictably, Equifax’s patching procedures have been cast into doubt with many questioning why the organization took four months to patch an external-facing web application that accessed large-volumes of sensitive information.  The doubts were evidently shared by the Board of Directors at Equifax: both the Chief Information Officer and the Chief Security Officer were forced out last week.

Fortunately, few SAP applications are impacted by the Apache Struts vulnerability addressed by CVE-2017-5638. Although many SAP products including Banking, BusinessObjects, and Sybase use the Apache framework, very few products use the Struts library within the framework.

However, SAP customers are strongly advised to review and revise their patching efforts in light of the breach. Despite concerns related to zero-day vulnerabilities, the root cause of the vast majority of breaches remains poor security practices rather than zero-day attacks. This includes ineffective patching procedures that open a wide window of opportunity for attackers to exploit known vulnerabilities before they are patched by organizations. This point was emphasized by a statement from Fortinet with the recent release of the company’s Global Threat Landscape Report. According to Fortinet, “Cybercriminals aren’t breaking into systems using new zero day attacks, they are primarily exploiting already discovered vulnerabilities”.

SAP customers can discover and apply security patches for SAP products using System Recommendations (SysRec). SysRec is an application within SAP Solution Manager that connects directly to SAP Support for real-time patch updates. It also connects directly to each system within SAP landscapes to monitor patch levels. SysRec downloads corrections for security vulnerabilities from SAP Support to each system. It also integrates with other areas in Solution Manager including Usage Logging and Solution Documentation for change impact analysis, Change Request Management (ChaRM) for managing changes, and Test Management for testing and deployment.

SAP Security Notes, August 2017

Zarah on September 7, 2017

Note 2381071 patches a critical cross-site Ajax vulnerability in the Prototype JS library of BusinessObjects. Ajax is a method often used by JavaScripts to exchange data between servers and clients to update parts of web pages without refreshing or reloading entire pages.  This minimizes network bandwidth usage and also improves response times through rapid operations. Ajax is an acronym for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML since it’s applied via XmlHttpRequest objects that interact dynamically with servers using JavaScript. XMLHttpRequest objects call server-side objects like pages and web services.

Browsers commonly apply a same-origin policy that prevent pages from accessing external resources that have a different scheme, hostname or port than existing pages. However, same-origin policies can be bypassed using procedures such as cross-origin resource sharing.  This could be exploited to transmit or load sensitive data to/ from malicious servers.  The cross-site Ajax request vulnerability addressed by Note 2381071 applies to versions 4.0 – 4.2 of BusinessObjects. Corrections are included in the patch levels for each relevant support package.

Note 2486657 deals with a high-risk directory traversal vulnerability in the NetWeaver AS Java Web Container. The Web Container is a component of the J2EE Engine and provides the runtime environment for Java applications including servlets and BSPs.

It receives HTTP requests from clients via the AS Java dispatcher. The requests are processed by applications in the Web Container to access business objects in the EJB Container. Note 2486657 improves input validation for file paths to prevent applications using the Servlet API exposing resources in parent directories or other directories outside the application context.

Other important notes include Notes 2376081, 2423540, 2524134 and 2280932 that patch a code injection vulnerability impacting iviews in Visual Composer, a URL redirection vulnerability in the SAP NetWeaver Logon Application, and a missing authorization check in the Security Provider Service.