CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2023-43123

Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor

Published: Nov 23, 2023 | Modified: Nov 21, 2024
CVSS 3.x
5.5
MEDIUM
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
CVSS 2.x
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu

On unix-like systems, the temporary directory is shared between all user. As such, writing to this directory using APIs that do not explicitly set the file/directory permissions can lead to information disclosure. Of note, this does not impact modern MacOS Operating Systems.

The method File.createTempFile on unix-like systems creates a file with predefined name (so easily identifiable) and by default will create this file with the permissions -rw-r–r–. Thus, if sensitive information is written to this file, other local users can read this information.

File.createTempFile(String, String) will create a temporary file in the system temporary directory if the java.io.tmpdir system property is not explicitly set.

This affects the class  https://github.com/apache/storm/blob/master/storm-core/src/jvm/org/apache/storm/utils/TopologySpoutLag.java#L99  and was introduced by  https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/STORM-3123

In practice, this has a very limited impact as this class is used only if ui.disable.spout.lag.monitoring

is set to false, but its value is true by default. Moreover, the temporary file gets deleted soon after its creation.

The solution is to use  Files.createTempFile https://docs.oracle.com/en/java/javase/11/docs/api/java.base/java/nio/file/Files.html#createTempFile(java.lang.String,java.lang.String,java.nio.file.attribute.FileAttribute...)  instead.

We recommend that all users upgrade to the latest version of Apache Storm.

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
Storm Apache 2.0.0 (including) 2.6.0 (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