CVE-2017-1195 in Curam Social Program Management
Summary
by MITRE
IBM Curam Social Program Management 6.0, 6.1, 6.2, and 7.0 could allow a remote attacker to conduct phishing attacks, using an open redirect attack. By persuading a victim to visit a specially-crafted Web site, a remote attacker could exploit this vulnerability to spoof the URL displayed to redirect a user to a malicious Web site that would appear to be trusted. This could allow the attacker to obtain highly sensitive information or conduct further attacks against the victim. IBM X-Force ID: 123670.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 01/10/2021
This vulnerability exists in IBM Curam Social Program Management versions 6.0 through 7.0 and represents a critical open redirect flaw that enables sophisticated phishing attacks. The vulnerability stems from inadequate validation of redirect URLs within the application's web interface, allowing attackers to craft malicious links that appear to originate from legitimate IBM domains. When users click on these crafted URLs, they are silently redirected to attacker-controlled websites while the browser's address bar continues to display the trusted IBM domain, creating a deceptive user experience that significantly increases the likelihood of successful social engineering campaigns.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability falls under CWE-601, which specifically addresses open redirect vulnerabilities where applications redirect users to unvalidated external URLs. This weakness creates a pathway for attackers to bypass security controls that rely on URL validation, as users are tricked into believing they are navigating to legitimate IBM services while actually reaching malicious sites. The vulnerability operates at the application layer and can be exploited through web-based attack vectors without requiring any special privileges or access to the underlying system infrastructure. The flaw essentially allows attackers to create a false sense of trust by leveraging the legitimate IBM domain in the redirect chain, making the phishing attack more convincing to unsuspecting users.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple credential theft, as it provides attackers with a sophisticated platform for conducting multi-stage attacks against victims. Once users are redirected to malicious sites, attackers can harvest sensitive information through various means including credential harvesting, data exfiltration, or deployment of additional malware. The vulnerability particularly affects organizations using IBM Curam Social Program Management for social services delivery, where users may have access to sensitive personal and financial information. This creates a significant risk for data breaches and regulatory compliance violations, especially in environments governed by privacy regulations such as HIPAA or GDPR.
Organizations should implement immediate mitigations including validation of all redirect URLs against a whitelist of approved domains, implementation of proper URL encoding and sanitization techniques, and deployment of web application firewalls to detect and block suspicious redirect patterns. The mitigation strategy should also include user education programs to help identify suspicious URL patterns and implement browser-based security controls that warn users about potential phishing attempts. Additionally, organizations should conduct regular security assessments of their web applications to identify similar vulnerabilities and ensure that all redirect functionality properly validates external destinations. This vulnerability demonstrates the critical importance of input validation and the potential for seemingly minor security flaws to enable major exploitation vectors, aligning with ATT&CK technique T1566 for phishing attacks and T1071 for application layer protocol usage.