CVE-2018-2979 in FLEXCUBE Universal Banking
Summary
by MITRE
Vulnerability in the Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking component of Oracle Financial Services Applications (subcomponent: Infrastructure). Supported versions that are affected are 11.3.0, 11.4.0, 12.0.1, 12.0.2, 12.0.3, 12.1.0, 12.2.0, 12.3.0, 12.4.0, 14.0.0 and 14.1.0. Easily exploitable vulnerability allows low privileged attacker with network access via HTTP to compromise Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking. Successful attacks of this vulnerability can result in unauthorized ability to cause a hang or frequently repeatable crash (complete DOS) of Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking. CVSS 3.0 Base Score 6.5 (Availability impacts). CVSS Vector: (CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H).
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 04/10/2023
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2018-2979 affects Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking, a critical component within Oracle Financial Services Applications that serves as the foundation for banking operations. This particular weakness resides in the Infrastructure subcomponent and impacts a broad range of versions including 11.3.0 through 14.1.0, indicating a widespread exposure across multiple generations of the software. The vulnerability classification as easily exploitable suggests that attackers with minimal privileges and network access can potentially compromise the system, making it particularly concerning for financial institutions that rely on this platform for core banking services.
The technical flaw manifests as a weakness that allows low-privileged attackers with HTTP network access to execute attacks that can lead to complete denial of service conditions within the FLEXCUBE Universal Banking environment. This availability impact vulnerability specifically enables attackers to cause either a hang condition or frequently repeatable crashes that effectively render the banking application unusable. The CVSS 3.0 scoring of 6.5 reflects the severity of the availability impact, with the vector AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H indicating that network-based attacks requiring low privilege access can result in high availability impact without compromising confidentiality or integrity. This vulnerability operates at the infrastructure level, meaning it affects the underlying system architecture rather than application-specific functions, which amplifies its potential impact on business continuity.
The operational consequences of this vulnerability extend beyond simple service disruption, as the complete denial of service condition can severely impact financial institutions' ability to process transactions, maintain customer service, and operate their banking systems effectively. Organizations utilizing affected versions of FLEXCUBE Universal Banking face significant risk of operational downtime that can result in financial losses, regulatory compliance issues, and damage to customer trust. The vulnerability's designation as a complete DOS condition means that successful exploitation can bring the entire system to a halt, requiring extensive recovery procedures and potentially affecting multiple banking operations simultaneously.
Security practitioners should prioritize patch management for affected versions and consider implementing network segmentation to limit access to the vulnerable components. The vulnerability aligns with CWE-400, which covers "Uncontrolled Resource Consumption" and represents a classic availability attack vector. From an ATT&CK framework perspective, this vulnerability maps to T1499.004 for "Endpoint Denial of Service" and potentially T1566.001 for "Phishing" if attackers leverage social engineering to gain the initial low privilege access required. Organizations should also implement monitoring solutions to detect unusual patterns of HTTP requests that could indicate exploitation attempts and establish incident response procedures specifically addressing denial of service conditions in financial applications.