CVE-2019-5523 in vCloud Director for Service Providers
Summary
by MITRE
VMware vCloud Director for Service Providers 9.5.x prior to 9.5.0.3 update resolves a Remote Session Hijack vulnerability in the Tenant and Provider Portals. Successful exploitation of this issue may allow a malicious actor to access the Tenant or Provider Portals by impersonating a currently logged in session.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 08/21/2023
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2019-5523 affects VMware vCloud Director for Service Providers version 9.5.x prior to the 9.5.0.3 update, representing a critical remote session hijacking flaw that compromises the authentication and authorization mechanisms within the tenant and provider portals. This vulnerability falls under the category of session management weaknesses and aligns with CWE-384, which addresses session fixation and hijacking issues in web applications. The flaw enables malicious actors to impersonate active user sessions and gain unauthorized access to sensitive administrative and tenant portals, potentially leading to complete system compromise and data breaches.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability stems from inadequate session management controls within the vCloud Director web interface components. When users authenticate to either the tenant or provider portals, the system should maintain secure session tokens that are sufficiently random and time-bound to prevent unauthorized reuse or prediction. However, the vulnerability allows attackers to exploit session handling mechanisms by either capturing valid session identifiers or by leveraging weaknesses in session regeneration processes, thereby enabling them to seamlessly transition into active user sessions without proper authentication. This type of attack directly maps to ATT&CK technique T1548.003, which encompasses session hijacking and credential theft through manipulation of session tokens.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple unauthorized access, as it provides attackers with potential pathways to escalate privileges and execute further malicious activities within the virtualized infrastructure. Once an attacker successfully hijacks a session, they can perform administrative functions, access confidential tenant data, modify virtual machine configurations, and potentially move laterally within the network environment. The severity is amplified by the fact that this vulnerability affects both tenant and provider portals, meaning that unauthorized access could occur at multiple levels of the vCloud Director architecture, from individual tenant accounts to overarching service provider administrative functions. Organizations relying on this platform face significant risk of data exposure, service disruption, and compliance violations.
Mitigation strategies for CVE-2019-5523 primarily involve applying the vendor-provided security update to version 9.5.0.3 or later, which implements proper session management controls and strengthens authentication mechanisms. Additionally, organizations should implement network segmentation to isolate vCloud Director components, deploy web application firewalls to monitor and filter session-related traffic, and establish robust session timeout policies. Security teams should also conduct regular vulnerability assessments of their virtualized environments and implement monitoring solutions to detect anomalous session behavior. The remediation process should include comprehensive testing of the updated environment to ensure that session management functions operate correctly and that no regressions have been introduced. Organizations should also review their incident response procedures to prepare for potential session hijacking events and establish protocols for immediate session termination upon detection of suspicious activities.