CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2022-0018

Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor

Published: Feb 10, 2022 | Modified: Feb 17, 2022
CVSS 3.x
6.5
MEDIUM
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
CVSS 2.x
2.6 LOW
AV:N/AC:H/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu

An information exposure vulnerability exists in the Palo Alto Networks GlobalProtect app on Windows and MacOS where the credentials of the local user account are sent to the GlobalProtect portal when the Single Sign-On feature is enabled in the GlobalProtect portal configuration. This product behavior is intentional and poses no security risk when connecting to trusted GlobalProtect portals configured to use the same Single Sign-On credentials both for the local user account as well as the GlobalProtect login. However when the credentials are different, the local account credentials are inadvertently sent to the GlobalProtect portal for authentication. A third party MITM type of attacker cannot see these credentials in transit. This vulnerability is a concern where the GlobalProtect app is deployed on Bring-your-Own-Device (BYOD) type of clients with private local user accounts or GlobalProtect app is used to connect to different organizations. Fixed versions of GlobalProtect app have an app setting to prevent the transmission of the users local user credentials to the target GlobalProtect portal regardless of the portal configuration. This issue impacts: GlobalProtect app 5.1 versions earlier than GlobalProtect app 5.1.10 on Windows and MacOS; GlobalProtect app 5.2 versions earlier than GlobalProtect app 5.2.9 on Windows and MacOS This issue does not affect GlobalProtect app on other platforms.

Weakness

The product exposes sensitive information to an actor that is not explicitly authorized to have access to that information.

Affected Software

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Globalprotect Paloaltonetworks 5.1 *
Globalprotect Paloaltonetworks 5.2 *

Extended Description

There are many different kinds of mistakes that introduce information exposures. The severity of the error can range widely, depending on the context in which the product operates, the type of sensitive information that is revealed, and the benefits it may provide to an attacker. Some kinds of sensitive information include:

Information might be sensitive to different parties, each of which may have their own expectations for whether the information should be protected. These parties include:

Information exposures can occur in different ways:

It is common practice to describe any loss of confidentiality as an “information exposure,” but this can lead to overuse of CWE-200 in CWE mapping. From the CWE perspective, loss of confidentiality is a technical impact that can arise from dozens of different weaknesses, such as insecure file permissions or out-of-bounds read. CWE-200 and its lower-level descendants are intended to cover the mistakes that occur in behaviors that explicitly manage, store, transfer, or cleanse sensitive information.

Potential Mitigations

  • Compartmentalize the system to have “safe” areas where trust boundaries can be unambiguously drawn. Do not allow sensitive data to go outside of the trust boundary and always be careful when interfacing with a compartment outside of the safe area.
  • Ensure that appropriate compartmentalization is built into the system design, and the compartmentalization allows for and reinforces privilege separation functionality. Architects and designers should rely on the principle of least privilege to decide the appropriate time to use privileges and the time to drop privileges.

References