CVE-2024-32656

Ant Media Server is live streaming engine software. A local privilege escalation vulnerability in present in versions 2.6.0 through 2.8.2 allows any unprivileged operating system user account to escalate privileges to the root user account on the system. This vulnerability arises from Ant Media Server running with Java Management Extensions (JMX) enabled and authentication disabled on localhost on port 5599/TCP. This vulnerability is nearly identical to the local privilege escalation vulnerability CVE-2023-26269 identified in Apache James. Any unprivileged operating system user can connect to the JMX service running on port 5599/TCP on localhost and leverage the MLet Bean within JMX to load a remote MBean from an attacker-controlled server. This allows an attacker to execute arbitrary code within the Java process run by Ant Media Server and execute code within the context of the antmedia service account on the system. Version 2.9.0 contains a patch for the issue. As a workaround, one may remove certain parameters from the antmedia.service file.

Weakness

The product does not perform an authorization check when an actor attempts to access a resource or perform an action.

Extended Description

Assuming a user with a given identity, authorization is the process of determining whether that user can access a given resource, based on the user’s privileges and any permissions or other access-control specifications that apply to the resource. When access control checks are not applied, users are able to access data or perform actions that they should not be allowed to perform. This can lead to a wide range of problems, including information exposures, denial of service, and arbitrary code execution.

Potential Mitigations

• Divide the product into anonymous, normal, privileged, and administrative areas. Reduce the attack surface by carefully mapping roles with data and functionality. Use role-based access control (RBAC) [REF-229] to enforce the roles at the appropriate boundaries.
• Note that this approach may not protect against horizontal authorization, i.e., it will not protect a user from attacking others with the same role.
• Use a vetted library or framework that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid.
• For example, consider using authorization frameworks such as the JAAS Authorization Framework [REF-233] and the OWASP ESAPI Access Control feature [REF-45].
• For web applications, make sure that the access control mechanism is enforced correctly at the server side on every page. Users should not be able to access any unauthorized functionality or information by simply requesting direct access to that page.
• One way to do this is to ensure that all pages containing sensitive information are not cached, and that all such pages restrict access to requests that are accompanied by an active and authenticated session token associated with a user who has the required permissions to access that page.

Related Attack Patterns

• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/665.html

References

• https://github.com/ant-media/Ant-Media-Server/commit/9cb38500729e0ff302da0290b9cfe1ec4dd6c764
• https://github.com/ant-media/Ant-Media-Server/security/advisories/GHSA-qwhw-hh9j-54f5