Updates released by BlackBerry for some Workspaces Server components address two vulnerabilities, including a high severity flaw that can be exploited for arbitrary code execution.
BlackBerry Workspaces, formerly known as WatchDox, is a platform that allows organizations to securely access, share and manage important files.
Eric Rafaloff, a researcher at Gotham Digital Science (GDS), discovered that some BlackBerry Workspaces Server components are affected by a couple of flaws.
One of the security holes, CVE-2017-9368, is related to a file server API that is designed for uploading and downloading files. Sending specially crafted HTTP GET requests to this API allows an unauthenticated attacker to view the file server’s source code.
After exploiting this vulnerability and looking at the source code, Rafaloff found an even more serious issue – a directory traversal that allows an unauthenticated attacker to upload a web shell to the server’s webroot and leverage it for code execution. This flaw is tracked as CVE-2017-9367.
“For example, upon exploitation of this vulnerability, GDS was able to read the contents of the Workspace Server’s database and compromise highly sensitive information,” GDS said in its advisory.
The vulnerabilities were reported to BlackBerry in May and they were patched this week. The company pointed out that exploitation of the flaws requires the attacker to know the structure of the Workspaces Server directory and have access to the targeted organization’s network. BlackBerry also noted that the exposed source code is not unique to each customer, and encrypted information obtained by exploiting CVE-2017-9367 remains protected by strong encryption technology.
BlackBerry has determined that the impacted components are Appliance-X versions 1.11.2 and earlier, vApp versions 5.6.0 to 5.6.6, and vApp versions 5.5.9 and earlier. The issues have been addressed with the release of Appliance-X version 1.12.0 and vApp version 5.7.2. Workspaces Server users and administrators who deploy on-premises versions of BlackBerry Workspaces in their organization have been advised to install the updates.
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Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.
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