CVE-2021-27614 in Business One Hana Chef Cookbook
Summary
by MITRE • 05/11/2021
SAP Business One Hana Chef Cookbook, versions - 8.82, 9.0, 9.1, 9.2, 9.3, 10.0, used to install SAP Business One on SAP HANA, allows an attacker to inject code that can be executed by the application. An attacker could thereby control the behaviour of the application thereby highly impacting the integrity and availability of the application.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 05/15/2021
SAP Business One Hana Chef Cookbook represents a critical vulnerability identified as CVE-2021-27614 affecting multiple versions including 8.82 through 10.0. This vulnerability resides within the installation and configuration framework used to deploy SAP Business One applications on SAP HANA database platforms. The flaw manifests as a code injection vulnerability that allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code within the application context, fundamentally compromising the system's security posture and potentially enabling full system compromise. The vulnerability's impact extends beyond simple data integrity concerns as it provides attackers with the capability to manipulate application behavior and potentially disrupt service availability.
The technical nature of this vulnerability aligns with CWE-94, which describes "Improper Control of Generation of Code ('Code Injection')" where untrusted data is used to construct code or commands that are then executed by the application. This particular flaw occurs during the installation process of SAP Business One on SAP HANA, suggesting that the vulnerability exists in how the Chef cookbook handles input parameters or configuration values during deployment. Attackers can exploit this weakness by crafting malicious input that gets processed and executed as part of the installation routine, effectively allowing them to inject and execute arbitrary commands on the target system. The vulnerability's presence in the Chef cookbook framework indicates that the issue originates from how configuration management tools process and execute deployment scripts rather than in the application itself.
From an operational perspective, this vulnerability presents significant risk to enterprise environments that rely on SAP Business One for business operations. The ability to execute code injection attacks means that adversaries can potentially gain unauthorized access to sensitive business data, manipulate financial records, and disrupt critical business processes. The impact on system integrity is particularly severe as attackers can modify the application behavior to redirect data flows, alter business logic, or establish persistent backdoors. Organizations using affected versions face the risk of complete system compromise, data exfiltration, and service disruption that could result in substantial financial and reputational damage. The vulnerability's exploitation potential is amplified by the fact that it occurs during the installation phase, meaning that organizations may not immediately detect the compromise.
The ATT&CK framework categorizes this vulnerability under techniques such as T1059.001 for Command and Scripting Interpreter and T1021.001 for Remote Services, as attackers can leverage the code injection to execute commands remotely and establish persistent access. Mitigation strategies should focus on immediate patching of affected versions, implementing network segmentation to limit access to the installation environment, and monitoring for unusual command execution patterns. Organizations should also consider implementing principle of least privilege access controls for deployment systems and conducting thorough security assessments of their configuration management tools. Additionally, the vulnerability highlights the importance of securing infrastructure as code practices and ensuring that automated deployment tools properly validate and sanitize all inputs to prevent similar injection attacks in the broader SAP ecosystem.