Is IDM's RBPM vulnerable to Apache Tomcat RCE if readonly set to false (CVE-2017-12617)

  • 7022269
  • 02-Nov-2017
  • 06-Nov-2017

Environment

Identity Manager Roles Based Provisioning Module 4.5.X & 4.6.X

Situation

The Apache Tomcat team recently reported that all Tomcat versions before 9.0.1 (Beta), 8.5.23, 8.0.47 and 7.0.82 contain a potentially dangerous remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability on all operating systems if the default servlet is configured with the parameter readonly set to false or the WebDAV servlet is enabled with the parameter readonly set to false. This configuration would allow any unauthenticated user to upload files (as used in WebDAV). It was discovered that the filter that prevents the uploading of JavaServer Pages (.jsp) can be circumvented. So JSPs can be uploaded, which then can be executed on the server.

The issue has been reported as CVE-2017-12617

Resolution

RBPM is not susceptible to this vulnerability, as the defaultServlet does not have the readonly attribute with a value of false. You can confirm this by checking the web.xml for references to DefaultServlet and seeing if the readonly attribute value is set. For example, we have the following Tomcat setting for RBPM under /opt/netiq/idm/apps/tomcat/conf/web.xml

    <servlet>

       <servlet-name>default</servlet-name>

        <servlet-class>org.apache.catalina.servlets.DefaultServlet</servlet-class>

        <init-param>

            <param-name>debug</param-name>

            <param-value>0</param-value>

        </init-param>

        <init-param>

            <param-name>listings</param-name>

            <param-value>false</param-value>

        </init-param>

        <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>

    </servlet>


This indicates that the DefaultServlet is not used with readonly attribute.

Additional Information