CVE-2017-5880 in Splunk
Summary
by MITRE
Splunk Web in Splunk Enterprise versions 6.5.x before 6.5.2, 6.4.x before 6.4.5, 6.3.x before 6.3.9, 6.2.x before 6.2.13, 6.1.x before 6.1.12, 6.0.x before 6.0.13, 5.0.x before 5.0.17 and Splunk Light versions before 6.5.2 allows remote authenticated users to cause a denial of service (daemon crash) via a crafted GET request, aka SPL-130279.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 09/01/2020
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2017-5880 represents a denial of service flaw in Splunk Enterprise and Splunk Light products that affects multiple version branches including 5.0.x through 6.5.x. This issue specifically impacts Splunk Web, which serves as the primary web interface for Splunk Enterprise administration and data exploration. The vulnerability stems from insufficient input validation within the web application's request handling mechanism, allowing authenticated attackers to craft malicious GET requests that trigger daemon crashes. This flaw operates at the application layer and demonstrates a critical weakness in the software's ability to process malformed or unexpected input parameters.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability involves a buffer overflow or memory corruption issue within Splunk Web's request parsing logic. When a specially crafted GET request is processed, the application fails to properly validate or sanitize the input parameters, leading to a crash in the underlying daemon process. This behavior aligns with CWE-121, which describes stack-based buffer overflow conditions, and CWE-122, which covers heap-based buffer overflow vulnerabilities. The flaw essentially allows an attacker to manipulate the application's memory management routines through carefully constructed request parameters, causing the service to become unavailable and requiring manual restart of the Splunk daemon processes.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple service disruption, as it can be exploited by authenticated users who already have access to the system. This means that adversaries with legitimate credentials can leverage the vulnerability to cause significant downtime for Splunk services, potentially affecting critical monitoring and security operations that rely on Splunk for log analysis and threat detection. The vulnerability also represents a potential escalation vector, as attackers who have gained initial access through other means could use this flaw to maintain persistent disruption of Splunk services. From an attacker perspective, this vulnerability maps to ATT&CK technique T1499.004, which involves network disruption through service availability denial.
Organizations utilizing affected Splunk versions face substantial risk from this vulnerability, particularly in environments where Splunk serves as a central monitoring platform for security operations. The impact can be amplified when considering that Splunk is commonly used for security information and event management, making service availability critical for incident response and threat detection capabilities. The vulnerability affects both Splunk Enterprise and Splunk Light editions, suggesting a widespread impact across different deployment scenarios. Organizations should prioritize patching to address this vulnerability, as the fix involves proper input validation and request parameter sanitization. The recommended mitigation strategy includes immediate upgrade to Splunk versions 6.5.2, 6.4.5, 6.3.9, 6.2.13, 6.1.12, 6.0.13, and 5.0.17 respectively, or implementation of network-level controls to restrict access to Splunk Web services. Additionally, implementing proper monitoring for unusual request patterns and establishing incident response procedures for service disruptions can help minimize the operational impact of such vulnerabilities.