CVE-2019-1937 - Improper Authentication

Severity

99%

Complexity

99%

Confidentiality

165%

A vulnerability in the web-based management interface of Cisco Integrated Management Controller (IMC) Supervisor, Cisco UCS Director, and Cisco UCS Director Express for Big Data could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to acquire a valid session token with administrator privileges, bypassing user authentication. The vulnerability is due to insufficient request header validation during the authentication process. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a series of malicious requests to an affected device. An exploit could allow the attacker to use the acquired session token to gain full administrator access to the affected device.

A vulnerability in the web-based management interface of Cisco Integrated Management Controller (IMC) Supervisor, Cisco UCS Director, and Cisco UCS Director Express for Big Data could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to acquire a valid session token with administrator privileges, bypassing user authentication. The vulnerability is due to insufficient request header validation during the authentication process. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a series of malicious requests to an affected device. An exploit could allow the attacker to use the acquired session token to gain full administrator access to the affected device.

CVSS 3.0 Base Score 9.8. CVSS Attack Vector: network. CVSS Attack Complexity: low. CVSS Vector: (CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H).

CVSS 2.0 Base Score 9.9. CVSS Attack Vector: network. CVSS Attack Complexity: low. CVSS Vector: (AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C).

Demo Examples

Improper Authentication

CWE-287

The following code intends to ensure that the user is already logged in. If not, the code performs authentication with the user-provided username and password. If successful, it sets the loggedin and user cookies to "remember" that the user has already logged in. Finally, the code performs administrator tasks if the logged-in user has the "Administrator" username, as recorded in the user cookie.


               
}
}
ExitError("Error: you need to log in first");
);
);
DoAdministratorTasks();

Unfortunately, this code can be bypassed. The attacker can set the cookies independently so that the code does not check the username and password. The attacker could do this with an HTTP request containing headers such as:


               
[body of request]

By setting the loggedin cookie to "true", the attacker bypasses the entire authentication check. By using the "Administrator" value in the user cookie, the attacker also gains privileges to administer the software.

Improper Authentication

CWE-287

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