CVE-2018-1332 in Storm
Summary
by MITRE
Apache Storm version 1.0.6 and earlier, 1.2.1 and earlier, and version 1.1.2 and earlier expose a vulnerability that could allow a user to impersonate another user when communicating with some Storm Daemons.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 02/15/2020
Apache Storm versions 1.0.6 and earlier, 1.1.2 and earlier, and 1.2.1 and earlier contain a critical authentication vulnerability that enables unauthorized users to impersonate legitimate users when communicating with Storm daemons. This flaw resides in the authentication mechanism of the Storm framework, specifically affecting the communication protocols between clients and daemon processes. The vulnerability stems from insufficient validation of authentication tokens and credentials during the user identification process, allowing attackers to forge authentication requests and assume the identity of other users within the Storm cluster. The issue impacts the core security model of Storm by undermining the principle of least privilege and user isolation that should exist between different actors in the distributed computing environment.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability involves weaknesses in the authentication handshake process where Storm daemons fail to properly verify the authenticity of user credentials presented during communication. Attackers can exploit this by crafting malicious authentication requests that bypass the normal verification procedures, effectively allowing them to execute commands and access resources as if they were legitimate users. This authentication bypass vulnerability aligns with CWE-287 which addresses improper authentication issues in software systems. The flaw particularly affects Storm's Nimbus and Supervisor daemons where user credentials are validated, creating a pathway for privilege escalation attacks and unauthorized access to cluster resources.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple unauthorized access, as it enables attackers to potentially compromise the entire Storm cluster by impersonating administrative users or other privileged accounts. This could result in data manipulation, unauthorized job submissions, resource consumption attacks, and potential lateral movement within the distributed computing environment. Organizations using Storm for real-time data processing and stream analytics face significant risks as attackers could disrupt processing pipelines, access sensitive data streams, or modify processing logic. The vulnerability affects the integrity and confidentiality of the Storm ecosystem, undermining trust in the authentication mechanisms that protect distributed computing resources. This weakness particularly impacts environments where Storm clusters process sensitive information or where multiple users collaborate on data processing tasks.
Mitigation strategies for this vulnerability include immediate upgrading to Storm versions 1.0.7, 1.1.3, or 1.2.2 which contain fixes for the authentication bypass issue. Organizations should also implement network segmentation to limit direct access to Storm daemon ports and consider enabling additional authentication layers such as TLS encryption with mutual certificate authentication. Security monitoring should be enhanced to detect anomalous authentication patterns and unusual user behavior within the Storm cluster. The vulnerability demonstrates the importance of proper authentication implementation as outlined in the mitre attack framework where authentication bypass techniques are categorized under credential access tactics. Regular security audits of distributed computing frameworks should be conducted to identify similar authentication weaknesses in other components of the data processing pipeline. Organizations must also ensure that security patches are applied promptly and that access controls are properly configured to limit the blast radius of potential authentication compromises within their Storm deployments.