CVE-2024-39775 in OpenHarmony
Summary
by MITRE • 09/02/2024
in OpenHarmony v4.1.0 and prior versions allow a remote attacker cause information leak through out-of-bounds Read.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 09/05/2024
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2024-39775 affects OpenHarmony versions 4.1.0 and earlier, representing a critical information disclosure flaw that enables remote attackers to execute out-of-bounds read operations. This vulnerability resides within the system's memory management mechanisms and demonstrates a fundamental failure in input validation and boundary checking. The flaw manifests when the system processes certain data structures without proper bounds verification, allowing malicious actors to access memory locations beyond the intended data boundaries. Such an issue fundamentally compromises the integrity of the system's memory protection mechanisms and creates opportunities for unauthorized data extraction.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability stems from inadequate input sanitization within the OpenHarmony kernel or middleware components. When processing user-supplied data or network packets, the system fails to validate array indices or buffer limits before accessing memory locations. This weakness creates a path for attackers to craft specially crafted inputs that trigger memory access violations, resulting in the exposure of sensitive information such as kernel memory contents, credentials, or other confidential data. The out-of-bounds read operation can potentially reveal stack contents, heap data, or even cryptographic keys and session tokens stored in adjacent memory regions.
From an operational perspective, this vulnerability presents significant risks to organizations deploying OpenHarmony systems, particularly in environments where security and data confidentiality are paramount. Remote attackers can leverage this flaw to extract sensitive information without requiring local access or elevated privileges, making the attack surface particularly broad. The impact extends beyond simple information disclosure as the leaked data could potentially enable further exploitation attempts including privilege escalation, system compromise, or targeted attacks against other connected systems. The vulnerability's remote exploitability means that attackers can initiate attacks from external networks without requiring physical access to the target devices.
The vulnerability aligns with CWE-129, which specifically addresses improper validation of array index values, and may also relate to CWE-787, concerning out-of-bounds write operations that can lead to information disclosure. From an attack framework perspective, this vulnerability maps to multiple ATT&CK techniques including T1005 for data from local system and T1041 for data compression, as attackers can use the leaked information to construct more sophisticated attacks or to identify additional system vulnerabilities. Organizations should consider implementing network segmentation and monitoring for unusual data access patterns as part of their defensive strategy.
Mitigation strategies should prioritize immediate patching of affected OpenHarmony versions to the latest releases that contain proper bounds checking implementations. System administrators should also implement network-based intrusion detection systems to monitor for exploitation attempts and consider deploying memory protection mechanisms such as stack canaries and address space layout randomization. Additionally, organizations should conduct thorough security assessments of their OpenHarmony deployments to identify potential additional vulnerabilities in related components and establish monitoring procedures for detecting unauthorized information access attempts. The remediation process must include comprehensive testing to ensure that the patch does not introduce regressions in system functionality while maintaining the integrity of the memory protection mechanisms.