CVE-2018-1821

published 2018-12-13

CVE-2018-1821: IBM Operational Decision Management 8.5, 8.6, 8.7, 8.8, and 8.9 is vulnerable to a XML External Entity Injection (XXE) attack when processing XML data. A…

Priority P2 71 critical 9.1 CVSS 3.0

AV N AC L PR N UI N S U C H I N A H

EXPLOIT

IBM Operational Decision Management 8.5, 8.6, 8.7, 8.8, and 8.9 is vulnerable to a XML External Entity Injection (XXE) attack when processing XML data. A remote attacker could exploit this vulnerability to expose sensitive information or consume memory resources. IBM X-Force ID: 150170.

Affected

9 ranges

Vendor	Product	Version range	Fixed in
ibm	operational_decision_management	—	—
ibm	operational_decision_management	—	—
ibm	operational_decision_management	—	—
ibm	operational_decision_management	—	—
ibm	operational_decision_management	—	—
ibm	operational_decision_manager	>= 8.6.0.0 < 8.6.0.3	8.6.0.3
ibm	operational_decision_manager	>= 8.7.0.0 < 8.7.1.2	8.7.1.2
ibm	operational_decision_manager	>= 8.8.0.0 < 8.8.1.3	8.8.1.3
ibm	operational_decision_manager	>= 8.9.0.0 < 8.9.2.1	8.9.2.1

Detection & IOCs extracted from sources · hover to see the quote

url /res/api/v1/ruleapps↗

url /rest/bpm/monitor/events↗

port 9443↗

port 9445↗

other SOAPAction: CBE_FOR_EACH_TRANSACTION_REQUESTI↗

other csrf_token parameter in POST to /res/api/v1/ruleapps↗

• → Detect XXE exploitation attempts targeting IBM ODM by monitoring POST requests to /res/api/v1/ruleapps with Content-Type: application/xml ↗
• → Detect XXE exploitation attempts targeting IBM BPM Monitor by monitoring POST requests to /rest/bpm/monitor/events with Content-Type: text/xml and SOAPAction: CBE_FOR_EACH_TRANSACTION_REQUESTI ↗
• → Monitor for XML payloads containing external entity declarations (DOCTYPE with SYSTEM or PUBLIC identifiers) sent to IBM ODM REST endpoints on ports 9443 and 9445 ↗
• → POC#1 uses XXE for internal port scanning; alert on outbound connections from the IBM ODM server process triggered by XML parsing, especially to internal RFC-1918 addresses ↗
• → POC#2 uses an external DTD file for XXE data exfiltration; monitor for XML parser-initiated outbound HTTP/FTP requests from the IBM ODM/BPM server process ↗
• → The X-Requested-With: XMLHttpRequest header combined with Content-Type: application/xml on POST to /res/api/v1/ruleapps is characteristic of this exploit; use this combination as a detection signal ↗

• · The JSESSIONID and LtpaToken2 cookie values in the PoC are session-specific and will differ per exploitation attempt; use cookie name presence (JSESSIONID, LtpaToken2, com.ibm.wbimonitor.UserName) rather than values for detection ↗
• · The csrf_token query parameter value is session-specific; detection should focus on the endpoint path and XML content-type rather than the token value ↗
• · Affected versions are IBM ODM 8.5, 8.6, 8.7, 8.8, and 8.9; detections should be scoped to environments running these versions ↗

CVSS provenance

nvd v3.0 9.1 CRITICAL CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:H

nvd v2.0 6.4 MEDIUM AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:P

CVEs like this are exactly what “Exploited This Week” covers.

Every Monday: what got weaponized or added to CISA KEV in the last seven days — each CVE cross-linked to its PoC, Nuclei template, and detection rule. Free, one email a week, unsubscribe in one click.

CWE-611