CVE-2014-0078 in Cloudforms 3.0 Management Engine
Summary
by MITRE
The CatalogController in Red Hat CloudForms Management Engine (CFME) before 5.2.3.2 allows remote authenticated users to delete arbitrary catalogs via vectors involving guessing the catalog ID.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 03/03/2018
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2014-0078 resides within the CatalogController component of Red Hat CloudForms Management Engine version 5.2.3.2 and earlier releases. This issue represents a critical authorization flaw that undermines the security model of the platform by allowing authenticated attackers to perform unauthorized catalog deletion operations. The vulnerability specifically affects the access control mechanisms implemented within the CFME administrative interface, creating a pathway for malicious actors to manipulate catalog resources beyond their intended permissions.
The technical exploitation of this vulnerability relies on a predictable catalog ID guessing mechanism that enables attackers to identify valid catalog identifiers within the system. This weakness stems from insufficient input validation and inadequate randomization of catalog identifiers, allowing authenticated users to systematically enumerate catalog resources and subsequently delete them without proper authorization. The flaw demonstrates poor implementation of the principle of least privilege, where users with basic authentication credentials can escalate their privileges to perform destructive operations within the catalog management subsystem.
From an operational perspective, this vulnerability poses significant risks to organizations utilizing Red Hat CloudForms Management Engine for cloud infrastructure management. The ability to delete arbitrary catalogs can result in complete loss of service catalog definitions, disruption of automated provisioning workflows, and potential compromise of service delivery capabilities. Attackers could exploit this vulnerability to remove critical service catalogs, making it impossible for legitimate users to provision required services, thereby causing operational downtime and business disruption. The impact extends beyond simple data loss as it affects the entire service catalog ecosystem and can potentially lead to cascading failures in automated provisioning systems.
The vulnerability aligns with CWE-284, which addresses improper access control, and represents a clear violation of the principle of least privilege in system design. From an ATT&CK framework perspective, this issue maps to privilege escalation and defense evasion techniques, as attackers can leverage this vulnerability to gain elevated privileges within the management engine and potentially hide their activities through catalog removal. Organizations should consider implementing additional access controls and monitoring mechanisms to detect unauthorized catalog deletion attempts, while also ensuring that catalog identifiers are properly randomized to prevent predictable enumeration attacks.
The recommended remediation strategy involves upgrading to Red Hat CloudForms Management Engine version 5.2.3.2 or later, which includes proper access control implementations and improved catalog identifier generation. Security administrators should also implement network segmentation and monitoring controls to detect anomalous catalog deletion activities. Additional mitigations include implementing role-based access controls with minimal required permissions, regular auditing of catalog management operations, and establishing automated alerts for unauthorized catalog modifications. Organizations should conduct thorough security assessments to identify any potential exploitation of this vulnerability and ensure that all administrative interfaces properly enforce authorization checks before allowing destructive operations.