CVE-2017-3489 in FLEXCUBE Investor Servicing
Summary
by MITRE
Vulnerability in the Oracle FLEXCUBE Investor Servicing component of Oracle Financial Services Applications (subcomponent: Security Management System). Supported versions that are affected are 12.0.1, 12.0.2, 12.0.3, 12.0.4, 12.1.0, 12.2.0 and 12.3.0. Easily "exploitable" vulnerability allows low privileged attacker with network access via HTTP to compromise Oracle FLEXCUBE Investor Servicing. Successful attacks of this vulnerability can result in unauthorized update, insert or delete access to some of Oracle FLEXCUBE Investor Servicing accessible data as well as unauthorized read access to a subset of Oracle FLEXCUBE Investor Servicing accessible data. CVSS 3.0 Base Score 5.4 (Confidentiality and Integrity impacts). CVSS Vector: (CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N).
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 12/19/2020
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2017-3489 resides within Oracle FLEXCUBE Investor Servicing, a critical component of Oracle Financial Services Applications that manages investor servicing operations for financial institutions. This security flaw specifically affects the Security Management System subcomponent and impacts multiple versions including 12.0.1 through 12.3.0, representing a significant attack surface across the Oracle FLEXCUBE ecosystem. The vulnerability's classification as easily exploitable indicates that malicious actors can leverage relatively simple techniques to compromise the system, making it particularly dangerous for financial organizations that rely on these platforms for mission-critical operations.
The technical nature of this vulnerability stems from inadequate access controls within the Security Management System, allowing low privileged attackers with network access via HTTP to execute unauthorized operations against the affected database components. This weakness enables attackers to perform unauthorized update, insert, and delete operations on specific data sets within the investor servicing environment, while also granting read access to sensitive information subsets. The vulnerability's CVSS 3.0 score of 5.4 reflects moderate severity with equal emphasis on confidentiality and integrity impacts, indicating that successful exploitation could result in significant data compromise without necessarily causing system availability disruption. The attack vector requires network access via HTTP, suggesting that the vulnerability could be exploited remotely, potentially from outside the organization's network perimeter.
From an operational perspective, this vulnerability poses substantial risk to financial institutions utilizing Oracle FLEXCUBE Investor Servicing as it could enable attackers to manipulate investor data, potentially affecting investment records, transaction histories, and other sensitive financial information. The ability to perform unauthorized updates and deletions creates opportunities for data integrity violations that could have cascading effects on financial reporting, regulatory compliance, and customer trust. The unauthorized read access capability further amplifies the risk by potentially exposing sensitive investor information that could be used for financial fraud, identity theft, or other malicious activities. Organizations relying on this platform must consider the potential for data exfiltration and modification attacks that could compromise their financial operations and regulatory standing.
Organizations should implement immediate mitigations including applying the relevant Oracle patches and updates released to address this vulnerability, which aligns with the principle of least privilege enforcement recommended in the CWE-284 access control framework. Network segmentation and firewall rules should be implemented to restrict HTTP access to the affected system, while monitoring should be enhanced to detect unauthorized access attempts. The vulnerability's characteristics suggest that implementing proper authentication controls and access logging would significantly reduce the attack surface. Additionally, organizations should conduct comprehensive security assessments of their Oracle FLEXCUBE implementations to identify similar weaknesses and ensure that the security management system properly enforces access controls. The ATT&CK framework's privilege escalation techniques and credential access categories are particularly relevant to understanding how this vulnerability could be exploited, as it essentially allows for unauthorized privilege escalation through the security management system's flawed access controls.