CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2020-8355

Cleartext Transmission of Sensitive Information

Published: Feb 10, 2021 | Modified: Feb 17, 2021
CVSS 3.x
4.9
MEDIUM
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
CVSS 2.x
4 MEDIUM
AV:N/AC:L/Au:S/C:P/I:N/A:N
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu

An internal product security audit of Lenovo XClarity Administrator (LXCA) prior to version 3.1.0 discovered the Windows OS credentials provided by the LXCA user to perform driver updates of managed systems may be captured in the First Failure Data Capture (FFDC) service log if the service log is generated while managed endpoints are updating. The service log is only generated when requested by a privileged LXCA user and it is only accessible to the privileged LXCA user that requested the file and is then deleted.

Weakness

The product transmits sensitive or security-critical data in cleartext in a communication channel that can be sniffed by unauthorized actors.

Affected Software

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Xclarity_administrator Lenovo * 3.1.0 (excluding)

Extended Description

Many communication channels can be “sniffed” (monitored) by adversaries during data transmission. For example, in networking, packets can traverse many intermediary nodes from the source to the destination, whether across the internet, an internal network, the cloud, etc. Some actors might have privileged access to a network interface or any link along the channel, such as a router, but they might not be authorized to collect the underlying data. As a result, network traffic could be sniffed by adversaries, spilling security-critical data. Applicable communication channels are not limited to software products. Applicable channels include hardware-specific technologies such as internal hardware networks and external debug channels, supporting remote JTAG debugging. When mitigations are not applied to combat adversaries within the product’s threat model, this weakness significantly lowers the difficulty of exploitation by such adversaries. When full communications are recorded or logged, such as with a packet dump, an adversary could attempt to obtain the dump long after the transmission has occurred and try to “sniff” the cleartext from the recorded communications in the dump itself.

Potential Mitigations

References