SAP this week released its monthly patches for October 2016 to resolve 48 vulnerabilities in its products, including 25 implementation flaws and 12 Missing Authorization checks.
According to enterprise software firm, the new Security Patch Day saw the release of only 11 Patch Day Security Notes, coupled with an update to a previously issued security note. However, the company also released 31 Support Package Security Notes, which are meant to improve “RFC security for CRM Solutions.”
To these, 5 other Notes that were “released after the second Tuesday of the previous month and before the second Tuesday of this month,” are added, ERPScan reveals. The company, which specializes in securing SAP and Oracle business-critical software, also notes that SAP’s October 2016 Security Patch Day resolves a record number of vulnerabilities, almost twice the monthly average number for this year.
Of the 48 Security Notes, only 3 were rated High Priority, while the remaining 45 were assessed with a Medium rating. The highest CVSS Base Score was 7.5. Implementation Flaw was the most common vulnerability type this month, followed by Missing Authorization Check, but Clickjacking, Cross-Site Request Forgery, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), SQL Injection, and Denial of Service (DoS) flaws were also patched.
The implementation flaws, ERPScan explains, are referred to as “Switchable authorization checks” in the Security Notes, and have been resolved through the implementation of new switchable authorization checks. These are inactive by default, to ensure compatibility with processes.
The most important vulnerabilities resolved this month include a Denial of Service vulnerability in SAP ASE (CVSS Base Score: 7.5), a Missing Authentication check vulnerability in SAP NetWeaver AS JAVA P4 Servercore component (CVSS Base Score: 7.3), an SQL injection vulnerability in SAP ST-PI component (CVSS Base Score: 6.3), a Cross-Site Scripting vulnerability in SAP MESSAGING SYSTEM SERVICE component (CVSS Base Score: 6.3), and a Cross-Site Request Forgery vulnerability in SAP BusinessObjects (CVSS Base Score: 6.1).
The Missing Authentication check vulnerability in P4 Servercore component could be exploited by an attacker to access a service without passing authorization procedures and use functionality of this service. Information disclosure, privilege escalation and other types of attacks are possible because of this vulnerability.
Found in SAP NetWeaver AS JAVA P4, a service that enables a remote control of SAP’s JAVA platform, the vulnerability is easier to exploit because the component is usually exposed to the Internet, ERPScan says. According to the company, the security issue has been around for around three years and there are at least 256 vulnerable services accessible online.
“The issue was first reported and patched in 2012. However, during one of penetration tests, ERPScan team found out that the issue still affected almost all new versions of the service. For example, the service pack 0.9 for the version 7.2 which is vulnerable, was released in 2013. It means that potentially the mission-critical service stayed unpatched for at least 3 years, i.e. 256 systems (possibly this number was higher in last 3 years) could be compromised,” ERPScan says.
The DoS vulnerability in SAP ASE can be exploited to terminate a process of a vulnerable component. By exploiting the SQL injection flaw in the SAP ST-PI component with specially crafted SQL queries, an attacker can read and modify sensitive information from a database, execute administration operations on a database, destroy data or make it unavailable.
The XSS vulnerability in SAP MESSAGING SYSTEM SERVICE allows an attacker to inject a malicious script into a page to access all cookies, session tokens and other critical information. As for the Cross-Site Request Forgery vulnerability, it can be used to exploit an authenticated user’s session either by using a cross-site scripting vulnerability or by presenting a specially crafted link to an attacked user.
Related: In Review: SAP’s 3,660 Security and Support Notes
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