CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2022-41954

Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor

Published: Nov 25, 2022 | Modified: Sep 07, 2023
CVSS 3.x
3.3
LOW
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N
CVSS 2.x
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu

MPXJ is an open source library to read and write project plans from a variety of file formats and databases. On Unix-like operating systems (not Windows or macos), MPXJs use of File.createTempFile(..) results in temporary files being created with the permissions -rw-r--r--. This means that any other user on the system can read the contents of this file. When MPXJ is reading a schedule file which requires the creation of a temporary file or directory, a knowledgeable local user could locate these transient files while they are in use and would then be able to read the schedule being processed by MPXJ. The problem has been patched, MPXJ version 10.14.1 and later includes the necessary changes. Users unable to upgrade may set java.io.tmpdir to a directory to which only the user running the application has access will prevent other users from accessing these temporary files.

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
Mpxj Mpxj * 10.14.1 (excluding)

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