Cloud Security

Microsoft Patches Vulnerability Allowing Full Access to Azure Service Fabric Clusters

Microsoft recently patched a vulnerability that can allow an attacker to gain full administrator permissions on Azure Service Fabric clusters.

Eduard Kovacs

October 19, 2022

Microsoft recently patched a vulnerability that can allow an attacker to gain full administrator permissions on Azure Service Fabric clusters.

Azure Service Fabric is a distributed systems platform that makes it easy to package, deploy, and manage microservices and containers. Users can create Service Fabric clusters — these are the hardware resources where applications can be deployed — on premises or in the cloud. Service Fabric Explorer (SFX) is an open-source tool for inspecting and managing these clusters.

Researchers at cloud security company Orca discovered that SFX v1 is affected by a spoofing vulnerability. The issue, tracked as CVE-2022-35829 and named FabriXss by Orca, involves client-side template injection (CSTI) and stored cross-site scripting (XSS).

“We found that a Deployer type user with a single permission to ‘Create new Applications’ via the dashboard, can use this single permission to create a malicious application name and abuse the Administrator permissions to perform various calls and actions,” Orca explained in a blog post detailing FabriXss.

“This includes performing a Cluster Node reset, which erases all customized settings such as passwords and security configurations, allowing an attacker to create new passwords and gain full Administrator permissions,” it added.

The vulnerability was reported to Microsoft in August and it was fixed with the October 2022 Patch Tuesday updates. The tech giant has told customers that they are vulnerable to attacks if they are using the older version of the tool — vulnerable versions have a URL that ends in ‘old.html’.

Microsoft has assigned a ‘medium severity’ (important) rating to the flaw and pointed out that user interaction is required for exploitation. Microsoft does not expect to see this vulnerability being exploited in malicious attacks.

This is not the only Azure Service Fabric vulnerability patched by Microsoft this year. Researchers at Palo Alto Networks have discovered a flaw that could allow an attacker with access to an Azure Linux container to escalate privileges and take over the entire cluster.

Written By Eduard Kovacs

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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