CVE-2018-1934 in Cognos Business Intelligence
Summary
by MITRE
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence 10.2.2 is vulnerable to cross-site request forgery which could allow an attacker to execute malicious and unauthorized actions transmitted from a user that the website trusts. IBM X-Force ID: 153179.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 03/16/2024
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence version 10.2.2 contains a critical cross-site request forgery vulnerability that exposes organizations to unauthorized administrative actions. This vulnerability falls under CWE-352, which specifically addresses cross-site request forgery flaws in web applications. The flaw exists due to insufficient validation of requests originating from authenticated users, allowing attackers to manipulate the application's behavior through crafted requests that appear legitimate to the system. The vulnerability specifically impacts the authentication and authorization mechanisms within the business intelligence platform, potentially enabling attackers to perform administrative functions without proper authorization.
The technical implementation of this CSRF vulnerability stems from the application's failure to properly validate request origins and lack of anti-CSRF tokens in critical administrative endpoints. When users navigate to malicious websites or receive crafted email attachments containing malicious links, the application processes these requests as if they originated from legitimate authenticated users. This creates a dangerous attack surface where unauthorized modifications to reports, data sources, user permissions, or system configurations can occur. The vulnerability is particularly concerning because IBM Cognos Business Intelligence typically handles sensitive business data and administrative controls, making successful exploitation potentially devastating for organizational security.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple data manipulation to encompass full administrative compromise of the business intelligence platform. Attackers could leverage this flaw to create new user accounts with elevated privileges, modify existing user permissions, alter report configurations, or even delete critical business intelligence data. The attack vector is particularly insidious because it requires minimal user interaction beyond visiting a malicious website, making it difficult to detect and prevent through traditional security measures. Organizations using this vulnerable version face significant risk of data breaches, unauthorized access to sensitive business intelligence, and potential disruption of critical business processes that depend on accurate reporting and data analysis.
Organizations should immediately implement mitigations including deploying proper anti-CSRF token validation across all administrative endpoints, implementing strict referer header validation, and ensuring that all critical operations require explicit user confirmation. The vulnerability also highlights the importance of regular security patching and vulnerability assessments, as outlined in the NIST cybersecurity framework and aligned with ATT&CK technique T1566 for credential access through social engineering. Additional protective measures include network segmentation to limit access to the business intelligence platform, implementing web application firewalls to detect and block malicious requests, and establishing robust monitoring for unusual administrative activities. IBM has released patches for this vulnerability in subsequent versions, and organizations should prioritize upgrading to patched releases to eliminate the risk of exploitation.