CVE-2012-0434 in SUSE Cloud
Summary
by MITRE
The server in Crowbar, as used in SUSE Cloud 1.0, uses weak permissions for the production.log file, which has unspecified impact and attack vectors.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 02/23/2018
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2012-0434 affects Crowbar software deployed within SUSE Cloud 1.0 environments, specifically targeting the server component's handling of log file permissions. This issue stems from insufficient access control mechanisms that allow unauthorized users to gain access to sensitive operational data through the production.log file. The weakness lies in the default file permission settings that fail to adequately restrict access to critical system logs, creating potential security exposure points within the cloud infrastructure.
The technical flaw manifests through improper file system permissions where the production.log file is created with overly permissive access controls, typically allowing read access to all users or groups within the system. This configuration violates fundamental security principles of least privilege and proper access control enforcement. The vulnerability can be classified under CWE-732 as improper limitation of a privilege to a resource, and represents a failure in implementing proper file access controls that should be enforced by the operating system's permission model. Attackers who can access this log file may potentially extract sensitive information including system configurations, user activities, authentication attempts, and other operational data that could aid in further exploitation.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple information disclosure, as the production.log file often contains detailed system information that could be leveraged by threat actors to understand system architecture, identify potential attack vectors, and plan more sophisticated breaches. The unspecified nature of attack vectors suggests that depending on the specific content of the log files, attackers could potentially exploit this weakness to gain insights into system behavior, identify vulnerable components, or even extract credentials if they are inadvertently logged. This vulnerability particularly affects cloud environments where multiple tenants share infrastructure, as unauthorized access to one tenant's logs could potentially expose information about other systems or users within the same cloud deployment.
Security mitigations for this vulnerability should focus on implementing proper file permission controls that restrict access to log files to authorized system administrators and specific processes only. The recommended approach involves configuring log files with restrictive permissions such as 600 or 640, ensuring that only the owner or specific authorized groups can access these sensitive files. Organizations should implement regular permission audits and monitoring to detect any unauthorized changes to log file access controls. This remediation aligns with security framework recommendations from NIST SP 800-53 and follows the principle of least privilege enforcement. Additionally, implementing centralized log management solutions with proper access controls and encryption can provide additional layers of protection beyond simple file permission adjustments. The vulnerability demonstrates the importance of proper security configuration management and highlights the need for regular security assessments of cloud infrastructure components to identify and remediate similar permission-related weaknesses across all system components.