An issue was discovered on Cerner Connectivity Engine (CCE) 4 devices. The user running the main CCE firmware has NOPASSWD sudo privileges to several utilities that could be used to escalate privileges to root. One example is the sudo ln -s /tmp/script /etc/cron.hourly/script command.
The product initializes or sets a resource with a default that is intended to be changed by the administrator, but the default is not secure.
| Name | Vendor | Start Version | End Version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Connectivity_engine_4_firmware | Cerner | * | 201812 (excluding) |
Developers often choose default values that leave the product as open and easy to use as possible out-of-the-box, under the assumption that the administrator can (or should) change the default value. However, this ease-of-use comes at a cost when the default is insecure and the administrator does not change it.