CVE-2017-14696 in SaltStack Salt
Summary
by MITRE
SaltStack Salt before 2016.3.8, 2016.11.x before 2016.11.8, and 2017.7.x before 2017.7.2 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service via a crafted authentication request.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 01/04/2023
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2017-14696 represents a critical denial of service flaw within SaltStack Salt, a widely deployed configuration management and automation platform. This issue affects multiple versions of the SaltStack software including releases prior to 2016.3.8, 2016.11.8, and 2017.7.2, creating a significant risk for organizations relying on SaltStack for their infrastructure automation and management. The vulnerability stems from insufficient input validation during the authentication process, allowing malicious actors to craft specially formatted authentication requests that can disrupt normal service operations.
The technical flaw manifests in the improper handling of authentication requests within SaltStack's communication framework. When a crafted authentication request is processed, the system fails to adequately validate the incoming data structure, leading to a condition where the service becomes unresponsive or crashes entirely. This vulnerability operates at the protocol level, specifically targeting the authentication mechanism that SaltStack uses to verify client identities before granting access to its distributed computing capabilities. The flaw can be exploited through network-based attacks without requiring any prior authentication credentials, making it particularly dangerous as it can be triggered by anyone who can reach the SaltStack master service.
The operational impact of CVE-2017-14696 extends beyond simple service disruption, potentially causing cascading failures throughout automated infrastructure management systems. Organizations utilizing SaltStack for critical infrastructure automation may experience complete service outages, preventing legitimate administrators from managing their systems while the service remains unavailable. This denial of service condition can persist until the SaltStack service is manually restarted, creating operational downtime that can span hours or days depending on the organization's incident response procedures. The vulnerability particularly affects environments where SaltStack is used for continuous deployment pipelines, configuration management, and orchestration tasks, where service availability is paramount for business operations.
Mitigation strategies for this vulnerability primarily involve immediate patching of affected SaltStack installations to versions that contain the necessary security fixes. Organizations should prioritize updating their SaltStack master and minion components to the latest stable releases, ensuring that all systems in the deployment are properly upgraded. Network-level mitigations can include implementing firewall rules to restrict access to SaltStack ports only to trusted administrative networks, and deploying intrusion detection systems to monitor for suspicious authentication patterns. Additionally, organizations should implement monitoring solutions that can detect service unavailability and trigger automated alerting processes to ensure rapid response to potential exploitation attempts. This vulnerability aligns with CWE-129, which addresses issues related to insufficient input validation, and represents a typical example of how authentication bypass vulnerabilities can be leveraged for denial of service attacks within enterprise automation platforms. The ATT&CK framework categorizes this as a service stoppage technique, where adversaries leverage software weaknesses to disrupt critical infrastructure services.