HP has published instructions for configuration changes that must be applied to the company’s UCMDB solution in order to prevent attackers from exploiting a high-impact vulnerability.
HP UCMDB (Universal Configuration Management Database) is used by IT organizations for processes such as asset management, business service management, change management, and service management.
The flaw, reported by Hans-Martin Münch of Germany-based Mogwai Security, can be exploited remotely for disclosure of information, HP said in an advisory published on Monday.
According to HP, the vulnerability (CVE-2014-7883) affects UCMDB Probe v9.05, UCMDB Probe v10.01 and UCMDB Probe v10.11. The company has provided configuration recommendations to address the issue.
In an advisory made available on Tuesday, Mogwai Security described the flaw as a JMX-Console authentication bypass. The company noted that JMX-Console is installed by default in UCMDB.
“The JMX-Console web application in UCMDB performs access control only for the GET and POST methods, which allows remote attackers to send requests to this application’s GET handler by using a different method (for example HEAD),” the security firm said.
“This vulnerability is identical with CVE-2010-0738 (JBoss JMX-Console Authentication bypass). [The vulnerability] can be used to create a new account which can then be used to access the JMX console,” the advisory continues.
Researchers have published a proof-of-concept (PoC) that shows how a Curl command could have been used to send a HEAD request and create a new user in the UCMDB backend.
The vulnerability was first reported to HP on November 14, 2014. Since it didn’t get a response from the company, Mogwai Security submitted another report on November 18.
UCMDB is not the only multi-platform software for which HP released a security advisory this year. Last week, the company published a security update for HP Insight Control for Linux CMS Preboot Execution Environment to address several vulnerabilities.
HP advises researchers who uncover vulnerabilities in the company’s products to report them to security-alert@hp.com.