CVE-2020-4469

published 2020-06-15

CVE-2020-4469: IBM Spectrum Protect Plus 10.1.0 through 10.1.5 could allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on the system. By using a specially crafted HTTP…

Priority P2 64 critical 9.8 CVSS 3.1

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

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus 10.1.0 through 10.1.5 could allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on the system. By using a specially crafted HTTP command, an attacker could exploit this vulnerability to execute arbitrary command on the system. This vulnerability is due to an incomplete fix for CVE-2020-4211. IBM X-Force ID: 181724.

Affected

1 ranges

Vendor	Product	Version range	Fixed in
ibm	spectrum_protect_plus	10.1.0 – 10.1.5	—

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

url https://<target>:8090/emi/api/hostname↗

port 8090↗

path /emi/api/hostname↗

path /emi/api/netconfig↗

filename attacker-rpm-1.0-0.noarch.rpm↗

path /tmp/attacker-rpm-1.0-0.noarch.rpm↗

filename ibm_spp_file_upload_rce_CVE-2020-4470.py↗

port 8080↗

cookie x-ac-sessionid: abcd↗

command curl -ki --tlsv1.2 -H 'x-ac-sessionid: abcd' -d "hostname=';id >/tmp/cmd_injection;echo '" 'https://<target>:8090/emi/api/hostname'↗

• → Alert on any HTTP request to /emi/api/hostname or /emi/api/netconfig on port 8090 that does not carry a valid authenticated session — the endpoints lack authentication and accept arbitrary input. ↗
• → Monitor for the static fake session header 'x-ac-sessionid: abcd' in HTTP requests to the SPP appliance, used in PoC exploitation to bypass session checks. ↗
• → Detect creation of files /tmp/cmd_injection or /tmp/hacked on the SPP appliance filesystem, which are written by the published PoC exploits. ↗
• → Watch for inbound HTTP GET requests from the SPP appliance to external hosts on port 8080 fetching .rpm files, indicating the CVE-2020-4470 RPM-download attack chain is in progress. ↗
• → Flag installation of RPM packages named attacker-rpm-1.0-0.noarch.rpm or sourced from /tmp on the SPP appliance, as this is the PoC malicious package used for RCE via scriptlets. ↗

• · CVE-2020-4469 is an incomplete fix for CVE-2020-4211. IBM SPP 10.1.5-2181 and later attempted to mitigate the original injection by single-quoting the hostname parameter, but this is insufficient — the injection payload wraps around the single-quote sanitization. ↗
• · The exploit requires no authentication; any arbitrary value for the x-ac-sessionid header (e.g., 'abcd') is accepted by the vulnerable endpoints, so session-based controls are not an effective mitigation. ↗
• · Successful exploitation results in command execution with root privileges, meaning any detection or response must assume full system compromise. ↗

CVSS provenance

nvd v3.1 9.8 CRITICAL CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

nvd v3.0 8.1 HIGH CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

nvd v2.0 10.0 CRITICAL AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

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