CVE-2016-4361 in LoadRunner
Summary
by MITRE
HPE LoadRunner 11.52 through patch 3, 12.00 through patch 1, 12.01 through patch 3, 12.02 through patch 2, and 12.50 through patch 3 and Performance Center 11.52 through patch 3, 12.00 through patch 1, 12.01 through patch 3, 12.20 through patch 2, and 12.50 through patch 1 allow remote attackers to cause a denial of service via unspecified vectors.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 08/23/2022
HPE LoadRunner and Performance Center products represent critical components in application performance testing and monitoring environments, serving as foundational tools for enterprises to evaluate system behavior under load conditions. These tools are widely deployed across organizations to simulate user traffic, measure application performance, and identify bottlenecks in complex IT infrastructures. The vulnerability identified in CVE-2016-4361 affects multiple versions of these products across different release streams, indicating a systemic issue that spans across various iterations of the software. The affected versions include LoadRunner 11.52 through patch 3, 12.00 through patch 1, 12.01 through patch 3, 12.02 through patch 2, and 12.50 through patch 3, alongside Performance Center versions with corresponding patch levels. This widespread impact suggests that the vulnerability is likely rooted in core architectural components shared across these product lines, making it particularly concerning for organizations maintaining multiple versions of these tools.
The technical flaw manifests as an unspecified vector that enables remote attackers to trigger a denial of service condition within the affected systems. While the exact nature of the vulnerability remains unspecified in the CVE description, the classification as a denial of service vulnerability indicates that attackers can disrupt the normal operation of these performance testing tools without requiring local access or elevated privileges. The unspecified vectors suggest that the vulnerability could potentially be exploited through various attack surfaces including network protocols, input processing mechanisms, or resource management functions within the LoadRunner and Performance Center applications. This lack of specificity in the vulnerability description often indicates either a complex underlying issue or that the vulnerability was discovered through fuzzing or other automated testing methods that identified the service disruption without fully characterizing the root cause. The remote exploitation capability places this vulnerability in the category of network-based attacks that can be executed from outside the organization's network perimeter.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple service disruption, as LoadRunner and Performance Center tools are integral to production testing and monitoring workflows. Organizations relying on these tools for performance validation, load testing, and capacity planning could face significant operational disruptions when attackers exploit this vulnerability. The denial of service condition would prevent authorized users from conducting performance tests, potentially leading to delayed software releases, compromised quality assurance processes, and extended downtime for critical applications. Additionally, the vulnerability affects both LoadRunner and Performance Center products, meaning organizations maintaining both toolsets could experience cascading impacts across their testing infrastructure. The affected versions span multiple release streams, indicating that enterprises maintaining legacy installations or those following different upgrade schedules could all be vulnerable, creating a broad attack surface for threat actors targeting performance testing environments.
Mitigation strategies for this vulnerability should prioritize immediate patching of all affected versions to ensure complete protection against exploitation. Organizations should implement network segmentation to limit access to these tools to authorized personnel only, reducing the attack surface available to remote adversaries. Monitoring network traffic for unusual patterns or connection attempts targeting these tools can provide early detection of exploitation attempts. The implementation of intrusion detection systems specifically configured to monitor for denial of service patterns can help identify potential exploitation activities. Security teams should also consider implementing access controls and authentication mechanisms to prevent unauthorized access to these critical performance testing tools. Organizations maintaining these systems should conduct comprehensive vulnerability assessments to identify any other potentially affected components within their performance testing infrastructure and ensure that all related applications and services are updated to mitigate similar risks. This vulnerability aligns with CWE-119 which addresses memory safety issues, and may also relate to ATT&CK techniques involving denial of service and privilege escalation through network-based attacks.