CVE-2017-3588 in Solaris Cluster
Summary
by MITRE
Vulnerability in the Solaris Cluster component of Oracle Sun Systems Products Suite (subcomponent: HA for MySQL). Supported versions that are affected are 3.3 and 4.3. Easily exploitable vulnerability allows unauthenticated attacker with logon to the infrastructure where Solaris Cluster executes to compromise Solaris Cluster. Successful attacks require human interaction from a person other than the attacker. Successful attacks of this vulnerability can result in unauthorized creation, deletion or modification access to critical data or all Solaris Cluster accessible data as well as unauthorized access to critical data or complete access to all Solaris Cluster accessible data and unauthorized ability to cause a partial denial of service (partial DOS) of Solaris Cluster. CVSS 3.0 Base Score 7.3 (Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability impacts). CVSS Vector: (CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:L).
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 01/19/2021
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2017-3588 resides within the Solaris Cluster component of Oracle Sun Systems Products Suite, specifically affecting the High Availability for MySQL subcomponent. This weakness manifests in versions 3.3 and 4.3 of the software, representing a significant security gap that adversaries can exploit to compromise the entire Solaris Cluster environment. The vulnerability's classification as easily exploitable indicates that attackers require minimal prerequisites to initiate attacks, primarily needing only logon access to the infrastructure where Solaris Cluster operates. This accessibility factor significantly amplifies the threat landscape, as it reduces the attack surface to merely having system-level credentials rather than requiring sophisticated network-level access.
The technical flaw within this vulnerability stems from insufficient authentication and authorization controls within the Solaris Cluster HA for MySQL implementation. This weakness allows an attacker with legitimate system access to perform unauthorized operations against cluster resources, including creating, deleting, or modifying critical data within the cluster environment. The vulnerability's impact extends beyond simple data manipulation to encompass complete access to all data accessible through the Solaris Cluster, representing a severe compromise of confidentiality and integrity. The requirement for human interaction from someone other than the attacker suggests that while the initial compromise might occur through automated means, some manual intervention by a legitimate user is necessary to fully exploit the vulnerability, possibly through session hijacking or privilege escalation techniques.
From an operational standpoint, successful exploitation of CVE-2017-3588 can result in catastrophic consequences for organizations relying on Solaris Cluster for mission-critical applications. The vulnerability enables attackers to gain unauthorized access to sensitive data and potentially cause partial denial of service conditions that could disrupt business operations. The CVSS 3.0 score of 7.3 reflects the severity of this weakness, with high impacts across confidentiality, integrity, and availability domains. The attack vector AV:L indicates local access requirements, while the low attack complexity AC:L suggests that exploitation does not require specialized skills or tools. The lack of required privileges PR:N means that even unauthenticated access can potentially lead to exploitation, though human interaction UI:R adds a layer of complexity that requires consideration of social engineering or session manipulation techniques.
Organizations should implement comprehensive mitigation strategies addressing this vulnerability through immediate patch management, ensuring that all affected Solaris Cluster installations are updated to versions that resolve the authentication and authorization flaws. Network segmentation and privilege minimization should be enforced to limit the potential impact of successful exploitation, while monitoring systems should be deployed to detect unusual cluster activity that might indicate unauthorized access attempts. The vulnerability aligns with CWE-284 (Improper Access Control) and CWE-312 (Cleartext Storage of Sensitive Information) categories, and represents a significant concern under ATT&CK framework's privilege escalation and persistence tactics. Regular security assessments and penetration testing should be conducted to identify potential exploitation vectors and ensure that compensating controls remain effective against evolving threat landscapes.