CVE-2018-16266 in Tizen
Summary
by MITRE
The Enlightenment system service in Tizen allows an unprivileged process to fully control or capture windows, due to improper D-Bus security policy configurations. This affects Tizen before 5.0 M1, and Tizen-based firmwares including Samsung Galaxy Gear series before build RE2.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 03/25/2024
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2018-16266 represents a critical security flaw in the Enlightenment windowing system service within the Tizen operating system. This issue stems from inadequate D-Bus security policy configurations that permit unprivileged processes to gain full control over window management operations. The flaw exists in Tizen versions prior to 5.0 M1 and affects various Tizen-based firmware implementations including Samsung Galaxy Gear series devices before build RE2. The vulnerability creates a significant attack surface where malicious or compromised processes can exploit the weak access controls to manipulate the graphical user interface elements.
The technical root cause of this vulnerability lies in the improper implementation of D-Bus security policies within the Enlightenment system service. D-Bus is a message bus system that enables communication between applications and system services, and when security policies are misconfigured, it allows unauthorized processes to access privileged interfaces. In this case, the Enlightenment windowing service exposes D-Bus interfaces that should be restricted to privileged system processes but are instead accessible to any unprivileged user-level process. This misconfiguration aligns with CWE-284 which describes improper access control vulnerabilities, specifically where objects receive more privileges than intended.
The operational impact of this vulnerability is substantial as it allows an attacker to perform complete window capture and control operations without requiring elevated privileges. An unprivileged process could potentially intercept window contents, manipulate window positioning and sizing, capture user input, and execute unauthorized graphical operations. This capability extends beyond simple visual manipulation to potentially enable more sophisticated attacks such as screen scraping, keylogging, or even privilege escalation through manipulation of the graphical interface. The vulnerability essentially undermines the fundamental security boundaries of the Tizen graphical subsystem.
From an adversarial perspective, this vulnerability maps directly to several ATT&CK techniques including T1056.001 (Input Capture - Keylogging) and T1068 (Exploitation for Privilege Escalation). Attackers could leverage this weakness to establish persistent access through graphical interface manipulation or to conduct more sophisticated social engineering attacks by capturing user interactions. The vulnerability also represents a failure in the principle of least privilege, where system services should only expose necessary interfaces to processes with legitimate requirements.
Mitigation strategies for this vulnerability require immediate implementation of proper D-Bus security policy enforcement. System administrators should upgrade affected Tizen devices to version 5.0 M1 or later where the security policies have been properly configured. Additionally, organizations should implement D-Bus access control lists that restrict Enlightenment service interfaces to only trusted system processes. Network segmentation and process monitoring should be employed to detect unauthorized access attempts to the affected D-Bus interfaces. Regular security audits of D-Bus configurations should be conducted to ensure that similar misconfigurations do not occur in other system services, particularly those handling graphical user interface operations. The remediation efforts should also include comprehensive testing of D-Bus security policies to verify that unauthorized processes cannot access privileged window management functions.