Multiple Vulnerabilities in IBM QRadar SIEM Allows Attackers to Escalate Privileges and to Execute Arbitrary Commands

Multiple Vulnerabilities found in IBM QRadar chained together allows a remote attacker to bypass authentication and to execute arbitrary commands with root privileges.

The IBM QRadar is an enterprise security information and event management (SIEM) product that collects the logs from log data from Operating system, Vulnerabilities, user activities, behaviors and networking devices. It can be deployed as a hardware, software or virtual appliance-based product.

The vulnerability was reported by independent security researcher Pedro Ribeiro and the vulnerabilities collectively tracked as CVE-2018-1418. National vulnerability database provides Critical Severity rating with Base Score: 9.8.

Also Read 6 Critical RCE and Buffer Overflow Vulnerabilities in IBM Informix Dynamic Server and Informix Open Admin Tool

“The Forensics web application is disabled in QRadar Community Edition, but the code still works, so these vulnerabilities can be exploited in all flavors of QRadar.” says beyond security.

QRadar Contains a built-in Forensic analysis application that contains two components, one servlet running in Java, and the main web application running PHP.

The exploit chain starts by abusing the first servlet component ForensicAnalysisServlet to bypass authentication that chains to the second vulnerability command injection with the PHP web application.

By leveraging PHP web application attackers can download and execute a shell, but with the unprivileged “nobody” user. Technical details can be PoC found in beyond security.

Pedro also escalated the privileges from limited “nobody” user to root by leveraging a corn job query as a local user. He confirms the vulnerability resides with 7.3.0 and 7.3.1 and all versions released since mid-2014 are affected.

IBM has released patches for Affected Products and Versions IBM QRadar SIEM 7.3.0 to 7.3.1 Patch 2 & IBM QRadar SIEM 7.2.0 to 7.2.8 Patch 11.

You can also read the Detailed Explanation of  Security Information and Event Management (SIEM).