CVE-2003-1116 in E-Business Suite
Summary
by MITRE
The communications protocol for the Report Review Agent (RRA), aka FND File Server (FNDFS) program, in Oracle E-Business Suite 10.7, 11.0, and 11.5.1 to 11.5.8 allows remote attackers to bypass authentication and obtain sensitive information from the Oracle Applications Concurrent Manager by spoofing requests to the TNS Listener.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 11/19/2024
The vulnerability described in CVE-2003-1116 represents a critical authentication bypass flaw within Oracle E-Business Suite components, specifically affecting the Report Review Agent communication protocol. This issue impacts multiple versions of Oracle E-Business Suite including 10.7, 11.0, and 11.5.1 through 11.5.8, creating a significant security risk for organizations utilizing these enterprise applications. The vulnerability stems from improper authentication mechanisms within the FND File Server program that handles communications for the Report Review Agent, which is a crucial component of Oracle's concurrent processing framework.
The technical exploitation of this vulnerability occurs through a sophisticated spoofing attack against the TNS Listener service, which is Oracle's Transparent Network Substrate protocol implementation. Attackers can manipulate the communication flow between the Report Review Agent and the Oracle Applications Concurrent Manager by forging requests that appear to originate from legitimate sources. This spoofing technique allows unauthorized parties to bypass the normal authentication procedures that should validate user credentials and access permissions before granting access to sensitive system resources. The flaw essentially creates a backdoor pathway through which malicious actors can gain unauthorized access to the concurrent manager processes that handle critical business operations.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple unauthorized access, as it provides attackers with the ability to obtain sensitive information from the Oracle Applications Concurrent Manager. This could include confidential business data, system configuration details, user credentials, and other proprietary information that resides within the concurrent processing environment. The vulnerability particularly affects organizations running Oracle E-Business Suite in enterprise environments where the concurrent manager handles critical financial and operational processing tasks, making the potential damage substantial. The attack vector is particularly dangerous because it operates at the network protocol level, making detection more challenging and allowing for automated exploitation across multiple systems.
Organizations affected by this vulnerability should implement immediate mitigations including network segmentation to isolate the TNS Listener services, implementing proper firewall rules to restrict access to the affected ports, and applying the appropriate Oracle security patches released to address this specific issue. The vulnerability aligns with CWE-287, which addresses improper authentication in software systems, and represents a significant weakness in the authentication framework of Oracle's enterprise applications. From an attack perspective, this vulnerability maps to ATT&CK technique T1078 which covers valid accounts and T1566 which covers credential harvesting, demonstrating how this flaw could enable broader compromise within an organization's network infrastructure. The security implications require comprehensive monitoring of network traffic patterns and authentication logs to detect potential exploitation attempts and ensure proper implementation of access controls throughout the Oracle E-Business Suite environment.