CVE-2025-36143 in Lakehouse
Summary
by MITRE • 09/18/2025
IBM Lakehouse (watsonx.data 2.2) could allow an authenticated privileged user to execute arbitrary commands on the system due to improper validation of user supplied input.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 09/26/2025
IBM Lakehouse running watsonx.data version 2.2 contains a critical command injection vulnerability that arises from inadequate input validation mechanisms within the system's authentication framework. This flaw specifically affects privileged users who have already established authenticated sessions, making it particularly dangerous as it bypasses initial access controls. The vulnerability stems from the system's failure to properly sanitize or validate user-supplied input before processing it within system commands, creating an exploitable path for command injection attacks. According to the CWE catalog, this corresponds to CWE-77 which describes improper neutralization of special elements used in commands, a well-documented weakness that has been exploited in numerous high-profile security incidents across various platforms.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability allows an authenticated user with sufficient privileges to craft malicious input that gets directly executed within the system's command processing pipeline. This occurs when user-provided data is concatenated or interpolated into system commands without proper sanitization or parameterization. Attackers can leverage this weakness to execute arbitrary system commands with the privileges of the affected service account, potentially leading to complete system compromise. The vulnerability exists in the application's input handling logic where user-supplied parameters are not adequately validated against a whitelist of acceptable values or properly escaped before being processed by underlying system functions.
Operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple privilege escalation as it provides attackers with persistent access to the underlying system infrastructure. Once exploited, attackers can manipulate data, escalate privileges further, or establish backdoors within the lakehouse environment. The implications are particularly severe in enterprise environments where watsonx.data systems typically process sensitive business data and may be integrated with other critical infrastructure components. This vulnerability can be leveraged to perform reconnaissance activities, exfiltrate data, or disrupt services, potentially affecting multiple organizational systems that depend on the lakehouse platform for data processing and analytics. The attack surface is broadened by the fact that the vulnerability requires only authenticated access, meaning that compromised credentials from other attack vectors can be used to exploit this weakness.
Mitigation strategies should focus on implementing comprehensive input validation and sanitization across all user-supplied data pathways within the application. Organizations should immediately apply the vendor-provided patches or updates that address this specific vulnerability and implement proper parameterization of all system commands to prevent direct concatenation of user input. Network segmentation and access control measures should be strengthened to limit the blast radius of potential exploitation. Security monitoring should be enhanced to detect unusual command execution patterns and unauthorized privilege escalation attempts. The implementation of principle of least privilege should be enforced to ensure that even if exploitation occurs, the attacker's access remains limited. Additionally, regular security assessments and penetration testing should be conducted to identify similar vulnerabilities within the system's architecture, following the ATT&CK framework's guidance on command and scripting interpreter techniques that attackers commonly employ to achieve persistence and privilege escalation.