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Researchers on Wednesday reported crucial vulnerabilities in a extensively used networking equipment that leaves a few of the world’s greatest networks open to intrusion.
The vulnerabilities reside in BIG-IP Subsequent Central Supervisor, a part within the newest era of the BIG-IP line of home equipment, which organizations use to handle site visitors going into and out of their networks. Seattle-based F5, which sells the product, says its gear is utilized in 48 of the highest 50 companies as tracked by Fortune. F5 describes the Subsequent Central Supervisor as a “single, centralized level of management” for managing whole fleets of BIG-IP home equipment.
As units performing load balancing, DDoS mitigation, and inspection and encryption of information getting into and exiting giant networks, BIG-IP gear sits at their perimeter and acts as a serious pipeline to a few of the most security-critical assets housed inside. These traits have made BIG-IP home equipment ultimate for hacking. In 2021 and 2022, hackers actively compromised BIG-IP home equipment by exploiting vulnerabilities carrying severity rankings of 9.8 out of 10.
On Wednesday, researchers from safety agency Eclypsium reported discovering what they mentioned had been 5 vulnerabilities within the newest model of BIG-IP. F5 has confirmed two of the vulnerabilities and launched safety updates that patch them. Eclypsium mentioned three remaining vulnerabilities have gone unacknowledged and it’s unclear if their fixes are included within the newest launch. Whereas the exploited vulnerabilities from 2021 and 2022 affected older BIG-IP variations, the brand new ones reside within the newest model, generally known as BIG-IP Subsequent. The severity of each vulnerabilities is rated as 7.5.
“BIG-IP Subsequent marks a very new incarnation of the BIG-IP product line touting improved safety, administration, and efficiency,” Eclypsium researchers wrote. “And that is why these new vulnerabilities are significantly vital—they not solely have an effect on the most recent flagship of F5 code, additionally they have an effect on the Central Supervisor on the coronary heart of the system.”
The vulnerabilities enable attackers to realize full administrative management of a tool after which create accounts on techniques managed by the Central Supervisor. “These attacker-controlled accounts wouldn’t be seen from the Subsequent Central Supervisor itself, enabling ongoing malicious persistence inside the surroundings,” Eclypsium mentioned. The researchers mentioned they don’t have any indication any of the vulnerabilities are beneath lively exploitation.
Each of the fastened vulnerabilities will be exploited to extract password hashes or different delicate knowledge that enable for the compromise of administrative accounts on BIG-IP techniques. F5 described considered one of them—tracked as CVE-2024-21793—as an Odata injection flaw, a category of vulnerability that enables attackers to inject malicious knowledge into Odata queries. The opposite vulnerability, CVE-2024-26026, is an SQL injection flaw that may execute malicious SQL statements.
Eclypsium mentioned it reported three further vulnerabilities. One is an undocumented programming interface that enables for server-side request forgeries, a category of assault that positive aspects entry to delicate inner assets which might be purported to be off-limits to outsiders. One other is the power for unauthenticated directors to reset their password even with out understanding what it’s. Attackers who gained management of an administrative account might exploit this final flaw to lock out all official entry to a susceptible system.
The third is a configuration within the bcrypt password hashing algorithm that makes it attainable to carry out brute-force assaults in opposition to hundreds of thousands of passwords per second. The Open Net Software Safety Challenge says that the bcrypt “work issue”—which means the quantity of assets required to transform plaintext into cryptographic hashes—must be set to a stage no decrease than 10. When Eclypsium carried out its evaluation, the Central Supervisor set it at six.
Eclypsium researchers wrote:
The vulnerabilities we now have discovered would enable an adversary to harness the facility of Subsequent Central Supervisor for malicious functions. First, the administration console of the Central Supervisor will be remotely exploited by any attacker capable of entry the executive UI by way of CVE 2024-21793 or CVE 2024-26026. This could end in full administrative management of the supervisor itself. Attackers can then reap the benefits of the opposite vulnerabilities to create new accounts on any BIG-IP Subsequent asset managed by the Central Supervisor. Notably, these new malicious accounts wouldn’t be seen from the Central Supervisor itself.
All 5 vulnerabilities had been disclosed to F5 in a single batch, however F5 solely formally assigned CVEs to the two unauthenticated vulnerabilities. We have now not confirmed if the opposite 3 had been fastened on the time of publication.
F5 representatives didn’t instantly have a response to the report. Eclypsium went on to say:
These weaknesses can be utilized in a wide range of potential assault paths. At a excessive stage attackers can remotely exploit the UI to realize administrative management of the Central Supervisor. Change passwords for accounts on the Central Supervisor. However most significantly, attackers might create hidden accounts on any downstream system managed by the Central Supervisor.
Eclypsium
The vulnerabilities are current in BIG-IP Subsequent Central Supervisor variations 20.0.1 by means of 20.1.0. Model 20.2.0, launched Wednesday, fixes the 2 acknowledged vulnerabilities. As famous earlier, it’s unknown if model 20.2.0 fixes the opposite conduct Eclypsium described.
“If they’re fastened, it’s +- okay-ish, contemplating the model with them will nonetheless be thought of susceptible to different issues and want a repair,” Eclypsium researcher Vlad Babkin wrote in an electronic mail. “If not, the system has a long-term approach for an authenticated attacker to maintain their entry ceaselessly, which shall be problematic.”
A question utilizing the Shodan search engine reveals solely three cases of susceptible techniques being uncovered to the Web.
Given the latest rash of lively exploits concentrating on VPNs, firewalls, load balancers, and different units positioned on the community edge, BIG-IP Central Supervisor customers would do properly to put a excessive precedence on patching the vulnerabilities. The supply of proof-of-concept exploitation code within the Eclypsium disclosure additional will increase the probability of lively assaults.
