CVE-2021-44523 in SiPass integrated
Summary
by MITRE • 12/14/2021
A vulnerability has been identified in SiPass integrated V2.76 (All versions), SiPass integrated V2.80 (All versions), SiPass integrated V2.85 (All versions), Siveillance Identity V1.5 (All versions), Siveillance Identity V1.6 (All versions < V1.6.284.0). Affected applications insufficiently limit the access to the internal activity feed database. This could allow an unauthenticated remote attacker to read, modify or delete activity feed entries.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 12/16/2021
This vulnerability affects Siemens integrated security platforms including SiPass and Siveillance Identity systems across multiple versions. The flaw resides in the insufficient access controls governing the internal activity feed database, which serves as a critical component for logging security events and system activities. The vulnerability represents a significant security weakness that directly impacts the integrity and confidentiality of system audit trails.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability stems from inadequate authorization mechanisms within the affected software versions. Attackers can exploit this weakness to gain unauthorized access to the internal activity feed database without requiring authentication credentials. This misconfiguration allows remote attackers to perform read, modify, and delete operations on activity feed entries, effectively compromising the system's audit capabilities and potentially enabling further attacks. The vulnerability operates at the database access control layer, where proper access restrictions should prevent unauthorized data manipulation.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple data exposure, as it undermines the fundamental security posture of affected systems. An attacker who successfully exploits this vulnerability could alter security logs to cover malicious activities, delete evidence of unauthorized access attempts, or even inject false entries to mislead security monitoring systems. This capability significantly weakens incident response capabilities and forensic analysis, as security administrators cannot trust the integrity of activity feed entries. The vulnerability affects both read and write operations, making it particularly dangerous for maintaining system integrity.
This vulnerability aligns with CWE-284 (Improper Access Control) and represents a clear violation of the principle of least privilege. From an ATT&CK framework perspective, this weakness maps to T1562.006 (Impair Command Line Arguments) and T1070 (Indicator Removal on Host) as attackers could manipulate system logs to avoid detection. The lack of authentication requirements for database access directly violates security best practices established in NIST SP 800-53 and ISO 27001 frameworks. Organizations using these systems face potential compliance violations and increased risk of undetected security breaches.
Mitigation strategies should focus on immediate patching of affected systems to the latest available versions that address the access control flaw. Network segmentation should be implemented to isolate affected systems from critical network segments, while monitoring should be enhanced to detect unusual database access patterns. Access controls should be strengthened through proper authentication mechanisms, and regular security audits should verify database access permissions. Additionally, organizations should implement database activity monitoring solutions to detect unauthorized access attempts and maintain comprehensive backup strategies to recover from potential data corruption.