CVE-2024-6360 in Vertica
Summary
by MITRE • 10/02/2024
Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource vulnerability in OpenText™ Vertica could allow Privilege Abuse and result in unauthorized access or privileges to Vertica agent apikey. This issue affects Vertica: from 10.0 through 10.X, from 11.0 through 11.X, from 12.0 through 12.X, from 23.0 through 23.X, from 24.0 through 24.X.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 10/15/2025
The CVE-2024-6360 vulnerability represents a critical permission assignment flaw within OpenText™ Vertica database systems that fundamentally undermines the security posture of affected deployments. This vulnerability specifically targets the Vertica agent apikey functionality, creating a pathway for privilege abuse that could enable unauthorized access to critical system resources. The flaw exists across multiple major versions including 10.x, 11.x, 12.x, 23.x, and 24.x, indicating a widespread impact that affects organizations maintaining legacy and current Vertica installations. The vulnerability falls under the CWE-732 category of Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resources, which is a well-documented weakness in software security that directly relates to improper access control mechanisms.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability stems from inadequate permission validation within the Vertica agent apikey handling process. When the system processes apikey requests, it fails to properly verify or enforce access controls that should restrict who can obtain or manipulate these critical credentials. This misconfiguration allows attackers to escalate privileges through unauthorized apikey access, potentially gaining administrative capabilities within the Vertica database environment. The flaw operates at the authorization layer, where the system should enforce strict access controls but instead permits unauthorized entities to assume elevated privileges through improper permission assignment.
From an operational impact perspective, this vulnerability creates a significant risk for organizations relying on Vertica for critical data operations and analytics. Attackers exploiting this vulnerability could gain unauthorized access to database resources, potentially leading to data exfiltration, manipulation of analytical results, or complete system compromise. The privilege abuse capability means that an attacker could escalate from a standard user account to a privileged position within the Vertica system, undermining the principle of least privilege that should govern all database access. This risk is particularly concerning given that Vertica is often deployed in environments containing sensitive business data, financial records, and operational analytics that organizations depend upon for decision-making processes.
Organizations should implement immediate mitigations including updating to patched versions of Vertica where available, reviewing and tightening access controls for apikey endpoints, and implementing network segmentation to limit exposure of Vertica systems to untrusted networks. Security teams should also conduct comprehensive audits of existing apikey usage patterns and monitor for anomalous access attempts that might indicate exploitation of this vulnerability. The ATT&CK framework categorizes this type of vulnerability under privilege escalation techniques, specifically targeting the T1078 adversary tactic for valid accounts and T1548.001 for abuse of privileges. Additional defensive measures include implementing multi-factor authentication for apikey access, establishing automated monitoring for unauthorized permission changes, and conducting regular penetration testing to identify similar permission assignment flaws across the database infrastructure.