CVE-2018-3041 in FLEXCUBE Enterprise Limits
Summary
by MITRE
Vulnerability in the Oracle FLEXCUBE Enterprise Limits and Collateral Management component of Oracle Financial Services Applications (subcomponent: Infrastructure). Supported versions that are affected are 12.3.0, 14.0.0 and 14.1.0. Easily exploitable vulnerability allows low privileged attacker with network access via HTTP to compromise Oracle FLEXCUBE Enterprise Limits and Collateral Management. Successful attacks of this vulnerability can result in unauthorized ability to cause a hang or frequently repeatable crash (complete DOS) of Oracle FLEXCUBE Enterprise Limits and Collateral Management. 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-2018-3041 resides within Oracle FLEXCUBE Enterprise Limits and Collateral Management, a critical component of Oracle Financial Services Applications that manages financial risk exposure and collateral arrangements for enterprise clients. This weakness specifically affects versions 12.3.0, 14.0.0, and 14.1.0 of the software, representing a significant security gap in financial services infrastructure that could be exploited by malicious actors seeking to disrupt critical business operations. The vulnerability is classified as easily exploitable, meaning that attackers with minimal technical expertise and network access can leverage this flaw to gain unauthorized control over the system.
The technical flaw manifests as a lack of proper input validation and access control mechanisms within the application's infrastructure layer, allowing attackers to craft malicious HTTP requests that can trigger system instability. This vulnerability operates at the application level and specifically targets the system's availability through a denial of service attack vector. The flaw enables a low privileged attacker to execute commands that cause the application to hang or repeatedly crash, effectively rendering the financial services platform unavailable to legitimate users and potentially disrupting critical banking operations. The CVSS score of 6.5 indicates a moderate to high severity threat with significant availability impact, as demonstrated by the vector AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H which shows network-based access with low complexity and low privilege requirements.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple system downtime, as financial institutions relying on FLEXCUBE for enterprise limits and collateral management face potential business disruption that could affect client relationships and regulatory compliance. When an attacker successfully exploits this vulnerability, they can cause complete denial of service conditions that may require system restarts, data recovery procedures, and potentially manual intervention to restore normal operations. The repeated nature of the crashes suggests that this is not a one-time exploitation event but rather a persistent threat that could be used to continuously disrupt services. Organizations using affected versions of Oracle FLEXCUBE Enterprise Limits and Collateral Management face significant risk of operational disruption, particularly during critical business hours when financial transactions and risk management activities are most active.
Mitigation strategies should include immediate patching of affected software versions to address the root cause of the vulnerability, implementing network segmentation to limit access to the vulnerable application, and establishing robust monitoring systems to detect unusual patterns of HTTP requests that may indicate exploitation attempts. Organizations should also consider implementing web application firewalls and access control measures to restrict HTTP traffic to authorized personnel only. The vulnerability aligns with CWE-20, which describes improper input validation, and maps to ATT&CK technique T1499.004 for network denial of service attacks, emphasizing the need for comprehensive security controls that address both the immediate threat and broader operational security requirements. Regular security assessments and vulnerability scanning should be conducted to identify similar weaknesses in the broader financial services infrastructure and ensure ongoing protection against evolving threat landscapes.