Several Vulnerabilities Found in SAP Business Apps

Onapsis, a firm specializing in business-critical application security, has published a total of five advisories detailing vulnerabilities found in enterprise solutions developed by SAP.

The security holes affect the business intelligence solution SAP BusinessObjects and the database management system SAP HANA (High-Performance Analytic Appliance).

Researchers have identified four remotely exploitable vulnerabilities in SAP BusinessObjects Edge 4.0. The first bug, CVE-2015-2073, can be leveraged by an unauthenticated attacker to read files on the BusinessObjects File Repository Server (FRS) just by knowing the names of the targeted files. The issue exists because the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) listener allows users to read any file on the FRS without authentication, Onapsis said.

A similar vulnerability (CVE-2015-2074) allows a remote, unauthenticated attacker to overwrite files on the FRS. Again, the only condition is that the attacker must know the name of the targeted file. This attack is possible because the CORBA listener allows users to overwrite files stored on the FRS without authentication.

The security firm noted that CORBA can also be used to test if a certain file or folder exists. An attacker could leverage this feature to guess directory and file names, especially if a predictable file naming convention exists.

SAP BusinessObjects is also plagued by a couple of improper authorization issues. One of them (CVE-2015-2076) allows an unauthenticated attacker to retrieve audit events from a remote BusinessObjects service by using CORBA.

“This can disclose sensitive information including report names, universe queries, logins, etc. Auditing details are listed in the Auditing tab of the CMS. All services which expose a Auditing service are vulnerable. In the default setting this includes all BusinessObjects services except the CMS,” Onapsis noted in its advisory.

A similar bug (CVE-2015-2075) can be leveraged by malicious actors to hide their actions by removing audit events. The vulnerability cannot be exploited to remove events that have already been written to the audit database, but it can be used to remove events waiting in the auditee queue. By default, the auditor checks for queued events every 5 minutes.

“The attacker can tell the remote service (i.e. the auditee) to clear an event from it’s queue. After the event is removed from the auditee queue, the auditor will never have knowledge of the event and, hence, it will not be written to the Audit database,” reads the advisory for this flaw.

The advisory for SAP HANA details two reflected cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities (CVE-2015-2072) in the SAP HANA Web-based Development Workbench.

“A reflected cross-site scripting attack can be used to non-permanently deface or modify displayed content from a Web site. Reflected cross-site scripting can be used to steal another user’s authentication information, such as data relating to their current session,” Onapsis said. “An attacker who gains access to this data may use it to impersonate the user and access all information with the same rights as the target user. If an administrator is impersonated, the security of the application may be fully compromised.”

The BusinessObjects and HANA vulnerabilities were reported to SAP in January and February 2014, and they were fixed in October 2014 when the vendor released patches. Onapsis advises organizations to apply the fixes as soon as possible to reduce business risks.