CVE-2020-2748 in VM VirtualBox
Summary
by MITRE
Vulnerability in the Oracle VM VirtualBox product of Oracle Virtualization (component: Core). Supported versions that are affected are Prior to 5.2.40, prior to 6.0.20 and prior to 6.1.6. Easily exploitable vulnerability allows high privileged attacker with logon to the infrastructure where Oracle VM VirtualBox executes to compromise Oracle VM VirtualBox. While the vulnerability is in Oracle VM VirtualBox, attacks may significantly impact additional products. Successful attacks of this vulnerability can result in unauthorized read access to a subset of Oracle VM VirtualBox accessible data. CVSS 3.0 Base Score 3.2 (Confidentiality impacts). CVSS Vector: (CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:N/A:N).
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 05/26/2024
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2020-2748 represents a significant security flaw within Oracle VM VirtualBox's core component that affects multiple version lines including 5.2.x prior to 5.2.40, 6.0.x prior to 6.0.20, and 6.1.x prior to 6.1.6. This issue falls under the Common Weakness Enumeration category CWE-284 which specifically addresses improper access control mechanisms, making it a critical concern for virtualization environments where privilege escalation and data confidentiality are paramount. The vulnerability's classification as easily exploitable indicates that an attacker with legitimate access to the underlying infrastructure can leverage this weakness to compromise the virtualization platform, creating a severe risk for organizations relying on VirtualBox for their virtual machine operations.
The technical nature of this vulnerability stems from insufficient access controls within the VirtualBox core that allows a high privileged attacker to gain unauthorized read access to sensitive data within the virtualization environment. This flaw specifically targets the confidentiality aspect of the system's security model as indicated by the CVSS 3.0 base score of 3.2, where the attack vector is local access AV:L, requiring low complexity AC:L, and leveraging high privileges PR:H. The vulnerability's impact extends beyond the immediate VirtualBox environment as the security breach can potentially affect additional Oracle products that may share components or data with the compromised virtualization platform, creating cascading effects throughout the organization's virtual infrastructure.
From an operational perspective, this vulnerability creates a substantial risk for organizations that maintain virtualized environments, particularly those where administrative access to the host system is granted to multiple users or where security boundaries are not properly enforced. The fact that this vulnerability requires only a high privileged attacker rather than a full system compromise makes it particularly dangerous as it can be exploited by insiders or compromised users with elevated access rights. The confidentiality impact C:L indicates that while the attacker can access a subset of data rather than all information, this still represents a significant breach of sensitive virtual environment information that could include guest operating system data, virtual machine configurations, or other confidential virtualization metadata.
Organizations should immediately implement mitigations including updating to the patched versions of Oracle VM VirtualBox as specified in the CVE advisory, ensuring that all systems running VirtualBox are updated to versions 5.2.40, 6.0.20, or 6.1.6 respectively. Network segmentation and access control measures should be reinforced to limit the potential impact of compromised accounts, while monitoring should be implemented to detect any unauthorized access attempts. The ATT&CK framework's T1078 technique for Valid Accounts and T1566 for Phishing should be considered in threat modeling, as this vulnerability could be exploited through compromised privileged accounts or through social engineering attacks that gain administrative access to the host systems. Additionally, organizations should conduct comprehensive audits of their virtualization environments to identify and remediate similar access control weaknesses that could potentially exist in other components of their virtual infrastructure.