The Pulsar broker serves two schema commands on its binary protocol: GetSchema, which returns the schema registered for a topic, and GetOrCreateSchema, which registers a new schema version for an existing topic. The broker handled both commands after checking only that the client connection was authenticated. Unlike the brokers other topic commands, such as those for creating producers and consumers or for looking up topics, these two commands did not check whether the authenticated client was authorized for the target topic. The Pulsar REST API endpoints for schemas were not affected.
An authenticated client without any permission on the target topic, namespace or tenant could use these commands to:
- read the schema registered for a topic in another namespace or tenant, disclosing the schema definition such as record field names and types. Message payloads are not disclosed.
- register a new schema version on an existing topic in another namespace or tenant. The topics schema compatibility and schema auto-update policies still apply. The issue does not allow message data to be read or modified, but a registered schema version can cause legitimate producers and consumers of that topic to fail with schema incompatibility errors until the schema is corrected by an administrator.
The standard Pulsar client performs an authorized topic lookup before it sends these commands, so the missing check could not be observed when testing with the standard client. A client that implements the binary protocol directly is not required to perform that lookup first.
This issue is relevant only to deployments that have authentication and authorization enabled. The GetSchema command is affected from Apache Pulsar 2.2.0, and the GetOrCreateSchema command from Apache Pulsar 2.5.0. After the fix, the broker requires the lookup permission on the topic for GetSchema and the produce permission on the topic for GetOrCreateSchema. This impact analysis assumes that Pulsar has been configured with the default authorization provider. For custom authorization providers, the impact could be slightly different.
This issue affects Apache Pulsar versions from 2.2.0 before 4.0.14, from 4.1.0 through 4.1.3, and from 4.2.0 before 4.2.5.
- 4.0.x version users should upgrade to at least 4.0.14.
- 4.1.x and 4.2.x version users should upgrade to at least 4.2.5.
Users operating versions prior to those listed above should upgrade to the aforementioned patched versions or newer versions.
The currently supported Apache Pulsar release lines are 4.0.x and 5.0.x. The supported versions schedule is available at https://pulsar.apache.org/contribute/release-policy/.
Weakness
The product does not perform an authorization check when an actor attempts to access a resource or perform an action.
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.