Various types of vulnerabilities have been identified in SearchBlox, the enterprise search solution built on top of Apache Lucene/Solr and Elasticsearch.
According to an advisory posted by the CERT Coordination Center at Carnegie Mellon University, a total of four types of security issues have been uncovered by Qualys researcher Ashish Kamble. The flaws are said to affect SearchBlox 8.1.x and earlier versions.
The expert has found both reflected and persistent cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities in SearchBlox (CVE-2015-0967). A persistent XSS bug has been identified in the “title” field of the “Create Featured Result” form, but this flaw can only be exploited by an authenticated attacker.
An unrestricted file upload vulnerability (CVE-2015-0968) also plagues SearchBlox. An attacker can exploit this flaw to upload active content, such as JSP pages, to a vulnerable server. Files can be uploaded using the image upload form hosted at /searchblox/admin/uploadImage.html by changing the file’s “Content-Type” to “image/jpeg.” Once the malicious file is uploaded, the attacker can execute it.
The vulnerable page can be accessed even by an unauthenticated attacker, CERT/CC noted. This issue was previously reported back in 2013, but it appears that it wasn’t fixed properly at the time.
Another vulnerability found in SearchBlox is related to the following URL:
http://:9200/_cluster/health?pretty=true
An unauthenticated attacker can access this URL and gain access to potentially sensitive information. This information exposure flaw has been assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2015-0969.
Finally, older versions of SearchBlox are affected by a cross-site request forgery (CSRF) weakness that allows an attacker to execute various actions with the victim’s privileges. However, targeted users must have an active session and the attacker must be able to trick them into clicking on a specially crafted link.
“A remote, unauthenticated attacker may be able to execute arbitrary script in the contexts of the end-user’s browser session, the application, or an authenticated user. Sensitive information may be exposed to unauthenticated users,” CERT/CC said regarding the impact of these vulnerabilities.
SearchBlox was informed of the existence of these security holes in late February. The vulnerabilities have been addressed with the release of SearchBlox 8.2, according to CERT/CC. Users are advised to update their installations as soon as possible.
SearchBlox is used by more than 300 organizations across 30 countries. The solution can be used to search information in websites, e-commerce product catalogs, intranet applications, the cloud, and Salesforce.