H2O.ai H2O through 3.46.0.4 allows attackers to arbitrarily set the JDBC URL, leading to deserialization attacks, file reads, and command execution. Exploitation can occur when an attacker has access to post to the ImportSQLTable URI with a JSON document containing a connection_url property with any typical JDBC Connection URL attack payload such as one that uses queryInterceptors.
The product deserializes untrusted data without sufficiently verifying that the resulting data will be valid.
It is often convenient to serialize objects for communication or to save them for later use. However, deserialized data or code can often be modified without using the provided accessor functions if it does not use cryptography to protect itself. Furthermore, any cryptography would still be client-side security – which is a dangerous security assumption. Data that is untrusted can not be trusted to be well-formed. When developers place no restrictions on “gadget chains,” or series of instances and method invocations that can self-execute during the deserialization process (i.e., before the object is returned to the caller), it is sometimes possible for attackers to leverage them to perform unauthorized actions, like generating a shell.