CVE-2023-27314 in ONTAP
Summary
by MITRE • 10/25/2023
ONTAP 9 versions prior to 9.8P19, 9.9.1P16, 9.10.1P12, 9.11.1P8, 9.12.1P2 and 9.13.1 are susceptible to a vulnerability which could allow a remote unauthenticated attacker to cause a crash of the HTTP service.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 10/31/2023
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2023-27314 affects NetApp ONTAP storage systems running versions prior to specific patch releases including 9.8P19, 9.9.1P16, 9.10.1P12, 9.11.1P8, 9.12.1P2, and 9.13.1. This represents a critical security flaw that exposes organizations to potential service disruption attacks targeting the HTTP service component of their storage infrastructure. The vulnerability stems from improper handling of certain HTTP requests that can trigger a denial of service condition when processed by the affected systems. This issue specifically impacts the web server functionality that handles HTTP communications within the ONTAP environment, potentially allowing attackers to exploit the flaw without requiring authentication credentials.
The technical nature of this vulnerability involves a buffer overflow or memory corruption condition within the HTTP service implementation that occurs when processing malformed or specially crafted HTTP requests. According to CWE classification, this vulnerability aligns with CWE-121, which describes stack-based buffer overflow conditions, or CWE-122, which covers heap-based buffer overflow scenarios. The flaw manifests when the HTTP service fails to properly validate input parameters from incoming requests, leading to memory corruption that ultimately results in service termination. Attackers can leverage this weakness by sending carefully constructed HTTP requests to the vulnerable system, causing the HTTP service to crash and restart, thereby disrupting normal operations and potentially creating availability issues for storage services.
From an operational impact perspective, this vulnerability presents significant risk to enterprise storage environments as it allows remote attackers to perform denial of service attacks against critical infrastructure components. The attack requires no authentication credentials, making it particularly dangerous as it can be exploited from any network location. Organizations utilizing affected ONTAP versions face potential business disruption when attackers exploit this vulnerability, as the HTTP service crash can affect web-based management interfaces, API access, and other HTTP-dependent storage functionalities. The impact extends beyond simple service interruption to potentially affect data availability and system reliability, particularly in environments where storage management operations rely heavily on HTTP-based communication protocols. This vulnerability directly maps to ATT&CK technique T1499.004, which covers network denial of service attacks targeting infrastructure services.
The recommended mitigation strategy involves immediate deployment of the vendor-supplied patches for the affected ONTAP versions, specifically targeting the mentioned patch releases that contain the necessary security fixes. Organizations should prioritize patch management activities to ensure all affected systems are updated promptly, as the vulnerability allows for remote exploitation without authentication requirements. Additionally, network segmentation and access controls should be implemented to limit exposure of vulnerable HTTP services to untrusted networks. Monitoring for suspicious HTTP traffic patterns and implementing intrusion detection systems can help identify potential exploitation attempts. Security teams should also conduct comprehensive vulnerability assessments to identify any other potentially affected systems within their environment that may be running older ONTAP versions. The patch deployment process should include thorough testing in non-production environments before rolling out to critical systems to ensure no unintended side effects occur during the remediation process.