CVE-2015-4990 in Tealeaf Customer Experience
Summary
by MITRE
The portal in IBM Tealeaf Customer Experience before 8.7.1.8818, 8.8 before 8.8.0.9026, 9.0.0, 9.0.0A, 9.0.1 before 9.0.1.1083, 9.0.1A before 9.0.1.5073, 9.0.2 before 9.0.2.1095, and 9.0.2A before 9.0.2.5144 allows local users to discover credentials by leveraging privileges during an unspecified connection type.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 05/26/2018
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2015-4990 affects IBM Tealeaf Customer Experience software across multiple version ranges, specifically targeting the portal component that handles various connection types. This issue represents a credential disclosure vulnerability that exploits local user privileges to gain access to sensitive authentication information. The flaw exists within the software's privilege handling mechanisms during unspecified connection processes, creating a potential attack vector for malicious actors with local system access. The vulnerability demonstrates a critical weakness in the application's security architecture where proper access controls fail to prevent credential exposure even when users possess legitimate local privileges. This type of vulnerability directly impacts the principle of least privilege and can enable attackers to escalate their access within the system.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability stems from improper privilege management during connection handling processes within the Tealeaf portal component. When local users establish connections to the system, the software fails to adequately protect credential information that may be exposed through memory dumps, process inspection, or other local access methods. The unspecified nature of the connection type suggests that this vulnerability could manifest across different network protocols or communication channels used by the application. This weakness creates an environment where attackers with local system access can potentially extract authentication tokens, passwords, or other sensitive credential data that should remain protected. The vulnerability aligns with CWE-255 Improper Handling of Credentials and CWE-310 Cryptographic Issues, indicating both credential handling flaws and potential cryptographic weaknesses in the credential storage or transmission mechanisms.
The operational impact of CVE-2015-4990 extends beyond simple credential theft, as it enables attackers to potentially gain deeper system access and maintain persistent presence within the environment. Local credential disclosure can lead to privilege escalation attacks where attackers leverage the exposed information to access additional system resources, databases, or administrative functions within the Tealeaf environment. This vulnerability particularly affects organizations using IBM Tealeaf Customer Experience for customer experience analytics, where the exposure of credentials could compromise sensitive customer data and business intelligence. The impact is amplified when considering that many organizations deploy these systems in production environments with high-value customer interaction data, making the potential compromise of authentication information particularly damaging. The vulnerability also creates opportunities for lateral movement within networks where attackers might use the stolen credentials to access other systems or services that share similar authentication mechanisms.
Organizations affected by this vulnerability should immediately implement the vendor-provided patches and updates for all supported versions of IBM Tealeaf Customer Experience. The remediation process requires careful planning to ensure that the patching activities do not disrupt ongoing customer experience monitoring operations while addressing the credential exposure risk. System administrators should conduct thorough vulnerability assessments to identify all instances of the affected software versions across their infrastructure. Additional mitigations include implementing enhanced access controls, monitoring for unauthorized local access attempts, and conducting regular credential rotation procedures for systems running the vulnerable software. Security teams should also review and strengthen their local privilege management policies to reduce the potential impact of similar vulnerabilities. The ATT&CK framework categorizes this vulnerability under T1078 Valid Accounts and T1566 Phishing, as it enables attackers to leverage local accounts to extract credentials that could then be used for further attacks. Organizations should also consider implementing network segmentation to limit local access privileges and reduce the blast radius of credential exposure incidents. Regular security audits and penetration testing should be conducted to identify and remediate similar privilege escalation vulnerabilities in other enterprise applications and systems.