CVE-2018-2376 in HANA Extended Application Services
Summary
by MITRE
In SAP HANA Extended Application Services, 1.0, a controller user who has SpaceAuditor authorization in a specific space could retrieve application environments within that space.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 01/04/2020
This vulnerability exists within SAP HANA Extended Application Services version 1.0 where a specific authorization misconfiguration allows a controller user with SpaceAuditor privileges to access application environment details within a designated space. The flaw represents a privilege escalation and information disclosure vulnerability that undermines the principle of least privilege in cloud application environments. The controller user can leverage their SpaceAuditor authorization to extract sensitive environment variables, configuration parameters, and application metadata that should remain restricted to authorized administrators or application developers. This issue directly impacts the security boundaries and access controls that SAP HANA Extended Application Services implements to protect application environments from unauthorized access. The vulnerability is classified under CWE-284 which addresses improper access control mechanisms, specifically focusing on insufficient authorization checks that allow unauthorized users to access protected resources. From an operational standpoint, this weakness could enable attackers to gather intelligence about application configurations, database connection strings, API keys, and other sensitive information that could facilitate further attacks within the SAP HANA ecosystem.
The technical exploitation of this vulnerability requires a controller user to already possess SpaceAuditor authorization within a specific space, but the flaw allows them to bypass normal access restrictions for environment data. This creates a scenario where users with read-only auditing permissions can escalate their access to retrieve detailed application environment information. The impact extends beyond simple information disclosure as this data can be used to map application architectures, identify potential attack vectors, and understand the underlying infrastructure dependencies. The vulnerability affects the core authorization model of SAP HANA Extended Application Services where the system fails to properly validate whether SpaceAuditor users should have access to environment details beyond their auditing scope. This misconfiguration aligns with ATT&CK technique T1068 which involves exploiting elevated privileges to gain access to sensitive information, and T1566 which covers social engineering and credential access through application-level vulnerabilities.
Organizations utilizing SAP HANA Extended Application Services should immediately implement access control reviews to ensure that SpaceAuditor roles do not inadvertently grant access to environment data that should remain restricted. The recommended mitigation involves updating the authorization model to properly separate auditing permissions from environment data access, ensuring that SpaceAuditor users can only view audit logs and not application environment details. SAP should provide patches or configuration updates that enforce stricter access controls for environment data retrieval, particularly focusing on the boundary between audit permissions and application configuration access. Security teams must monitor for unauthorized access attempts and implement additional logging mechanisms to detect when SpaceAuditor users attempt to access environment information. The vulnerability highlights the importance of regular security assessments of cloud application platforms and the need for comprehensive authorization testing to identify similar privilege escalation issues. Organizations should also consider implementing network segmentation and additional monitoring controls to prevent lateral movement if this vulnerability is exploited in combination with other access points within the SAP HANA environment.