IBM is advising the owners of certain KVM switches to update the firmware on their devices to address a total of three security holes that can be exploited remotely.
According to an advisory published by the company last week, the affected products are the IBM Global 2x2x16 Console Manager (GCM16) and the IBM Global 4x2x32 Console Manager (GCM32) keyboard, video and mouse (KVM) switches, which are used by organizations to manage servers remotely. Firmware versions 1.20.0.22575 and earlier are impacted so users are recommended to update to version 1.20.20.23447 or newer.
IBM has not provided any mitigations or workarounds.
The first vulnerability (CVE-2014-3085) is caused by an improperly sanitized input that could be exploited by an authenticated attacker to remotely execute arbitrary code on affected devices. The second flaw (CVE-2014-3081) can be leveraged by a remote authenticated attacker to read any file on the affected system, IBM said.
The last issue (CVE-2014-3080) is a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability caused by improper validation of user-supplied input.
“A remote attacker could exploit this vulnerability using a specially-crafted URL to execute script in a victim’s Web browser within the security context of the hosting Web site, once the URL is clicked. An attacker could use this vulnerability to steal the victim’s cookie-based authentication credentials,” reads IBM’s advisory.
Alejandro Alvarez Bravo has been credited for identifying and reporting these vulnerabilities. In a blog post published on Monday, Bravo said the devices made by Dell and probably other vendors are also affected, but he didn’t share any details. The expert claims to have contacted Dell, but he says he hasn’t received any response. SecurityWeek has reached out to Dell to find out if the company is aware of these vulnerabilities, but has not heard back by press time.
Bravo has published proof-of-concept code for two of the vulnerabilities. The researcher notified IBM of the existence of these issues on May 20.
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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