CVE-2018-10899 in Jolokia
Summary
by MITRE
A flaw was found in Jolokia versions from 1.2 to before 1.6.1. Affected versions are vulnerable to a system-wide CSRF. This holds true for properly configured instances with strict checking for origin and referrer headers. This could result in a Remote Code Execution attack.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 11/20/2023
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2018-10899 represents a critical cross-site request forgery flaw in Jolokia versions ranging from 1.2 through 1.6.0. This issue stems from inadequate protection mechanisms within the Jolokia agent implementation that manages Java management operations over HTTP. The flaw specifically affects systems where Jolokia is configured with strict origin and referrer header validation, creating a false sense of security that ultimately proves insufficient against this particular attack vector. The vulnerability resides in the agent's inability to properly validate request authenticity when these security headers are present, allowing malicious actors to craft requests that appear legitimate to the system.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability exploits the trust relationship between the Jolokia agent and its clients by manipulating the CSRF protection mechanisms that are supposed to prevent unauthorized operations. When properly configured with origin and referrer header checking, Jolokia instances still fail to adequately validate the complete request context, creating an attack surface where malicious requests can bypass security controls. This occurs because the system accepts requests that pass the header validation but lack proper authentication tokens or session verification, allowing attackers to execute arbitrary operations against the target system.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple privilege escalation to encompass full remote code execution capabilities. An attacker who successfully exploits this CSRF flaw can execute arbitrary code on the target system with the privileges of the Jolokia agent process, potentially leading to complete system compromise. The vulnerability affects systems where Jolokia is used for management and monitoring purposes, particularly in enterprise environments where Java applications are managed through JMX interfaces. This makes the attack particularly dangerous as it can target critical infrastructure components that are often overlooked in traditional security assessments.
Mitigation strategies for CVE-2018-10899 require immediate patching of affected Jolokia versions to 1.6.1 or later, which contains the necessary security fixes for the CSRF protection mechanisms. Organizations should also implement additional network-level controls such as firewall rules that restrict access to Jolokia endpoints to trusted IP addresses only, and deploy web application firewalls that can detect and block suspicious request patterns. The vulnerability aligns with CWE-352, which specifically addresses cross-site request forgery weaknesses, and maps to ATT&CK technique T1059 for remote code execution. Security teams should also consider implementing comprehensive monitoring of Jolokia endpoints for unusual request patterns and establish incident response procedures specifically targeting this type of vulnerability. The fix addresses the root cause by strengthening the validation of request contexts and ensuring that all authentication mechanisms work in conjunction rather than in isolation.