Attackers are apparently trying to exploit two path traversal vulnerabilities in the ‘Stagil navigation for Jira – Menus & Themes’ plugin, the SANS Internet Storm Center warns.
Distributed via the Atlassian marketplace, the plugin allows users to customize their Jira instance with a custom navigator, sub-menus, and other elements.
Tracked as CVE-2023-26255 and CVE-2023-26256, the two high-severity flaws were disclosed in February 2023, and were addressed with the release of version 2.0.52 of the plugin.
The bugs allow an attacker to modify the fileName parameter of the snjCustomDesignConfig and snjFooterNavigationConfig endpoints to traverse and read the file system.
Directory traversal issues typically allow attackers to read arbitrary files on the server on which an application is running, potentially gaining access to credentials, application data, and other sensitive information.
According to SANS dean of research Johannes Ullrich, the first exploitation attempts targeting CVE-2023-26255 were observed in late March. Following three months of silence, attackers have picked up the exploits again this week, and are now targeting both vulnerabilities.
“The attacker attempts to download the ‘etc/passwd’ file. Typically, ‘etc/passwd/’ is not that interesting. But it is often used to verify a vulnerability. The attacker may later retrieve other files that are more interesting,” Ullrich explains.
The security researcher also observed attacks attempting to download the ‘dbconfig.xmlpasswd’ file, which Jira uses to store database passwords.
The attacks, he notes, came from two different IP addresses, and contained similar requests for fetching files containing passwords.
“It is not clear if the two scans for either vulnerability are related. Having two larger scans for a vulnerability like this within a short time span is suspicious. The scans use different user agents, but this doesn’t mean that the scans were launched by different groups/individuals. Neither IP address is associated with a known threat group,” Ullrich notes.
Technical information and proof-of-concept (PoC) exploits targeting both vulnerabilities have been public since February.
Jira customers using the ‘Stagil navigation for Jira’ plugin are advised to update to a patched version as soon as possible.
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