CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2021-20595

Improper Restriction of XML External Entity Reference

Published: Jul 13, 2021 | Modified: Aug 04, 2021
CVSS 3.x
8.2
HIGH
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:H
CVSS 2.x
8.5 HIGH
AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:C
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu

Improper Restriction of XML External Entity Reference vulnerability in Mitsubishi Electric Air Conditioning System/Centralized Controllers (G-50A Ver.3.35 and prior, GB-50A Ver.3.35 and prior, GB-24A Ver.9.11 and prior, AG-150A-A Ver.3.20 and prior, AG-150A-J Ver.3.20 and prior, GB-50ADA-A Ver.3.20 and prior, GB-50ADA-J Ver.3.20 and prior, EB-50GU-A Ver 7.09 and prior, EB-50GU-J Ver 7.09 and prior, AE-200A Ver 7.93 and prior, AE-200E Ver 7.93 and prior, AE-50A Ver 7.93 and prior, AE-50E Ver 7.93 and prior, EW-50A Ver 7.93 and prior, EW-50E Ver 7.93 and prior, TE-200A Ver 7.93 and prior, TE-50A Ver 7.93 and prior, TW-50A Ver 7.93 and prior, CMS-RMD-J Ver.1.30 and prior), Air Conditioning System/Expansion Controllers (PAC-YG50ECA Ver.2.20 and prior) and Air Conditioning System/BM adapter(BAC-HD150 Ver.2.21 and prior) allows a remote unauthenticated attacker to disclose some of data in the air conditioning system or cause a DoS condition by sending specially crafted packets.

Weakness

The product processes an XML document that can contain XML entities with URIs that resolve to documents outside of the intended sphere of control, causing the product to embed incorrect documents into its output.

Affected Software

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
G-50a_firmware Mitsubishi 2.50 (including) 3.35 (including)

Extended Description

XML documents optionally contain a Document Type Definition (DTD), which, among other features, enables the definition of XML entities. It is possible to define an entity by providing a substitution string in the form of a URI. The XML parser can access the contents of this URI and embed these contents back into the XML document for further processing. By submitting an XML file that defines an external entity with a file:// URI, an attacker can cause the processing application to read the contents of a local file. For example, a URI such as “file:///c:/winnt/win.ini” designates (in Windows) the file C:\Winnt\win.ini, or file:///etc/passwd designates the password file in Unix-based systems. Using URIs with other schemes such as http://, the attacker can force the application to make outgoing requests to servers that the attacker cannot reach directly, which can be used to bypass firewall restrictions or hide the source of attacks such as port scanning. Once the content of the URI is read, it is fed back into the application that is processing the XML. This application may echo back the data (e.g. in an error message), thereby exposing the file contents.

Potential Mitigations

References