CVE-2018-7429 in Splunk
Summary
by MITRE
Splunkd in Splunk Enterprise 6.2.x before 6.2.14 6.3.x before 6.3.11, and 6.4.x before 6.4.8; and Splunk Light before 6.5.0 allow remote attackers to cause a denial of service via a malformed HTTP request.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 05/30/2023
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2018-7429 represents a critical denial of service flaw affecting Splunk Enterprise and Splunk Light installations. This issue impacts versions prior to specific patch releases including 6.2.14, 6.3.11, and 6.4.8, leaving numerous organizations exposed to potential service disruption attacks. The vulnerability resides within the splunkd daemon component which serves as the core processing engine for Splunk Enterprise, making it a prime target for attackers seeking to compromise system availability.
The technical exploitation of this vulnerability occurs through the processing of malformed HTTP requests that are sent to the splunkd service. When the service receives these crafted requests, it fails to properly validate or handle the malformed data, leading to unexpected behavior that ultimately results in the service becoming unresponsive or crashing entirely. This type of vulnerability falls under the CWE-400 category of "Uncontrolled Resource Consumption" and specifically aligns with CWE-129 which addresses "Improper Validation of Array Index" and CWE-20 which covers "Improper Input Validation". The flaw demonstrates a classic buffer over-read or improper request handling mechanism that can be triggered remotely without requiring authentication or special privileges.
From an operational perspective, this vulnerability poses significant risk to organizations relying on Splunk for log management, security monitoring, and business intelligence operations. The remote attack vector means that adversaries can exploit this weakness from anywhere on the network, potentially causing widespread service disruption across critical monitoring infrastructure. When splunkd crashes or becomes unresponsive, it affects the entire Splunk deployment, preventing log ingestion, search functionality, and real-time monitoring capabilities that security teams depend upon. The impact extends beyond simple service interruption as it can mask actual security incidents or operational problems that the Splunk system was designed to detect and report.
Organizations should immediately prioritize patching their Splunk installations to the recommended versions that contain the necessary fixes for this vulnerability. The mitigation strategy should include implementing network segmentation to limit access to splunkd ports, deploying intrusion detection systems to monitor for suspicious HTTP request patterns, and establishing monitoring procedures to detect service availability issues. According to ATT&CK framework, this vulnerability maps to T1499.004 which covers "Network Denial of Service" techniques and T1071.004 which addresses "Application Layer Protocol: DNS" where attackers might use similar techniques to exploit service availability. Additionally, implementing proper input validation controls, rate limiting for HTTP requests, and regular security assessments will help prevent exploitation of similar vulnerabilities in the future.