CVE-2015-0523 in RSA Certificate Manager
Summary
by MITRE
EMC RSA Certificate Manager (RCM) before 6.9 build 558 and RSA Registration Manager (RRM) before 6.9 build 558 allow remote attackers to cause an Administration Server denial of service via an invalid MIME e-mail message with a multipart/* Content-Type header.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 05/01/2022
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2015-0523 affects EMC RSA Certificate Manager (RCM) and RSA Registration Manager (RRM) versions prior to 6.9 build 558, representing a critical denial of service weakness that can be exploited remotely by attackers. This flaw specifically targets the email processing functionality within these security management systems, where the administration servers fail to properly handle malformed email messages containing multipart/* Content-Type headers. The vulnerability stems from inadequate input validation mechanisms that do not properly sanitize or reject malformed MIME content, creating a pathway for attackers to disrupt service availability through carefully crafted email payloads.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability involves the improper parsing of email headers and content structures within the administration server components of these RSA products. When the system receives an email message with an invalid multipart/* Content-Type header, the parsing routine fails to handle the malformed data gracefully, leading to a crash or hang in the administration server process. This behavior aligns with CWE-129, which describes improper validation of input ranges, and CWE-248, which addresses an exception not being caught. The flaw demonstrates a classic case of insufficient error handling and input sanitization, where the system does not adequately protect against malformed data that could cause unexpected behavior.
From an operational impact perspective, this vulnerability poses significant risk to organizations relying on RSA Certificate Manager and RSA Registration Manager for their PKI infrastructure management. The remote exploitation capability means that attackers can potentially disrupt critical certificate management services without requiring physical access or local privileges, making it particularly dangerous in enterprise environments where these systems manage thousands of certificates and user registrations. The denial of service effect can prevent legitimate administrators from accessing the administration console, issuing new certificates, or managing existing certificate lifecycles, effectively compromising the availability of the entire PKI infrastructure. This aligns with ATT&CK technique T1499.004, which covers network denial of service attacks, and represents a serious operational risk that could impact business continuity and security operations.
Organizations should implement immediate mitigations including applying the vendor-provided patches for RSA Certificate Manager and RSA Registration Manager versions 6.9 build 558 or later, which address the input validation issues in the email processing components. Network segmentation and email filtering mechanisms should be enhanced to detect and block malformed email traffic before it reaches the administration servers. Additionally, monitoring systems should be configured to detect unusual patterns in administration server behavior or service disruptions that could indicate exploitation attempts. The vulnerability highlights the importance of proper input validation and error handling in security-critical applications, emphasizing that even seemingly benign components like email processing can become attack vectors when insufficiently protected against malformed input data.