A recently detailed 0-day SAP vulnerability that was patched in September impacts over 900 SAP systems that are exposed to the Internet.
The bug could be exploited by an external attacker to remotely obtain the list of SAP users from the system, Quenta Solutions’ Sergiu Popa, who SAP acknowledged to have reported the vulnerability, says.
“This service is actually an example of application to create a time-off request. This service should not be activated in production systems, however, it’s installed by default and, in reality, few SAP customers disable the component,” ERPScan founder Alexander Polyakov explains.
By exploiting this vulnerability, an attacker could obtain information such as usernames, user IDs and even emails (provided that the user offered this piece of information). An actor obtaining the username and email can use them to launch phishing attacks or to spam users with malware.
The information disclosure vulnerability was patched by SAP in September, which means that it isn’t technically a 0-day. However, with over 15% of all SAP systems exposed to the Internet vulnerable to this bug and with patches usually slow to roll-out, many users might still be affected by this, ERPScan, which specializes in securing SAP applications, notes.
According to the company, the vulnerability impacts at least 941 SAP Systems exposed to the Internet, but this is not the first bug of the kind to have been resolved by SAP. In fact, the company recently patched 2 similar flaws in other applications.
“To make matters worse, an SAP system has 1000+ of such applications enabled by default. Thus, there is a need for detailed analysis of all exposed web services,” Polyakov says.
He also notes that ERPScan reported the very same vulnerability on July 12, but decided not to reveal details on it for three months, to comply with SAP’s policy on publicly disclosing information on vulnerabilities (the company asks researchers to hold details for three months, so that customers could apply patches). In the case of this 0-day, however, only 1.5 months passed between the release of the patch and the publication of details.
In October, SAP issued patches for 48 vulnerabilities in its products, including 25 Implementation Flaws and 12 Missing Authorization checks. As of June 2016, SAP had released over 3,660 Security Notes, but the number of resolved security flaws is much higher, because one security note can patch multiple vulnerabilities.
Related: Vulnerabilities in SAP HANA Impact Over 10,000 Customers
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