CVE-2019-0241 in Work
Summary
by MITRE
SAP Work and Inventory Manager (Agentry_SDK , before 7.0, 7.1) allows an attacker to prevent legitimate users from accessing a service, either by crashing or flooding the service.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 04/26/2020
SAP Work and Inventory Manager represents a critical enterprise application suite designed for supply chain management and inventory control within large organizations. The vulnerability identified as CVE-2019-0241 affects specific versions of the Agentry_SDK component, specifically those prior to versions 7.0 and 7.1. This flaw manifests as a denial of service condition that can be exploited by malicious actors to disrupt legitimate business operations. The vulnerability falls under the category of resource exhaustion attacks where an attacker can manipulate the system to consume excessive resources or trigger system failures.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability stems from inadequate input validation and resource management within the Agentry_SDK component. Attackers can leverage this weakness to send specially crafted requests or payloads that either cause the service to crash or flood the system with excessive requests. The flaw operates at the application layer where insufficient bounds checking and error handling mechanisms allow malicious input to trigger unintended system behavior. This type of vulnerability is categorized under CWE-400 as unspecified resource exhaustion, which directly relates to the ability of an attacker to consume system resources beyond normal operational limits.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple service disruption to potentially compromise entire supply chain operations within affected organizations. When legitimate users cannot access the service, it creates cascading effects throughout the enterprise resource planning ecosystem. Manufacturing schedules, inventory tracking, and procurement processes may be delayed or halted entirely. The attack vector typically involves sending malformed requests or excessive data to the vulnerable service, causing it to become unresponsive or crash entirely. This disruption can occur without requiring elevated privileges, making it particularly dangerous as it can be exploited by anyone with network access to the affected system.
Organizations utilizing affected SAP Work and Inventory Manager versions should prioritize immediate remediation through official SAP patches and updates. The vulnerability represents a significant risk to business continuity and operational resilience, particularly in mission-critical supply chain environments. Security teams should implement network segmentation to limit access to vulnerable components and monitor for unusual traffic patterns that might indicate exploitation attempts. Additionally, implementing rate limiting and input validation controls can provide additional layers of protection. From a threat modeling perspective, this vulnerability aligns with ATT&CK technique T1499.004 for network denial of service, demonstrating how application-level flaws can be leveraged to achieve broader operational disruption objectives. The incident underscores the importance of maintaining current security patches and conducting regular vulnerability assessments to identify and remediate similar weaknesses in enterprise applications.