CVE-2016-8923 in Curam Social Program Management
Summary
by MITRE
IBM Curam Social Program Management 5.2, 6.0, and 7.0 contains a vulnerability that would allow an authorized user to obtain sensitive information from the profile of a higher privileged user that they should not have access to. IBM X-Force ID: 118536.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 12/21/2020
This vulnerability exists within IBM Curam Social Program Management versions 5.2, 6.0, and 7.0, representing a critical information disclosure flaw that undermines the system's access control mechanisms. The vulnerability allows an authorized user to escalate their privileges and access sensitive profile information belonging to higher-privileged users without proper authorization. This represents a significant breach of the principle of least privilege that forms the foundation of secure system design and is categorized as a privilege escalation vulnerability under the Common Weakness Enumeration framework as CWE-276. The flaw specifically affects the application's user profile handling functionality, where proper access controls fail to validate whether a user has appropriate clearance levels to view another user's profile data.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability stems from insufficient authorization checks within the application's user management subsystem. When an authorized user attempts to access another user's profile information, the system fails to properly verify that the requesting user has the necessary permissions to access such sensitive data. This weakness creates a path for information disclosure that violates fundamental security principles and allows for unauthorized data access that could include personal information, role assignments, permission levels, and other sensitive profile attributes. The vulnerability's impact is particularly severe because it operates within the context of an already authenticated user session, making it difficult to detect and potentially allowing for prolonged unauthorized access without detection.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple information disclosure, as it fundamentally compromises the integrity of the system's user access controls and trust model. An attacker with access to this vulnerability could potentially gather intelligence about system administrators, senior managers, or other privileged users to plan more sophisticated attacks. The exposure of profile information could reveal user roles, access patterns, and system dependencies that would aid in further exploitation attempts. This vulnerability aligns with tactics described in the MITRE ATT&CK framework under the privilege escalation and credential access domains, where adversaries seek to gain access to higher-privilege accounts to expand their control over the system. Organizations using these vulnerable versions of IBM Curam Social Program Management face significant risk of unauthorized data access and potential system compromise.
Organizations should immediately implement mitigations including applying the latest security patches provided by IBM to address this vulnerability. The recommended approach involves updating to versions of IBM Curam Social Program Management that contain proper access control enforcement for user profile information. System administrators should also conduct comprehensive access control reviews to identify any potential unauthorized access that may have occurred during the vulnerability's existence. Additional defensive measures include implementing network segmentation to limit access to the application, enabling detailed audit logging for profile access attempts, and conducting regular security assessments to identify similar authorization flaws. The vulnerability highlights the importance of proper input validation and access control implementation, particularly in applications that handle sensitive user data and maintain complex permission structures. Organizations should also consider implementing automated monitoring solutions to detect anomalous access patterns that could indicate exploitation attempts of similar privilege escalation vulnerabilities.