Security Bulletin: IBM QRadar Network Security is NOT Affected by CVE-2021-4104, CVE-2021-44228, CVE-2021-45046 & CVE-2021-45105 exploits

Summary

IBM QRadar Network Security is NOT Affected by CVE-2021-4104, CVE-2021-44228, CVE-2021-45046 & CVE-2021-45105 exploits.

IBM QRadar Network Security uses WebSphere Liberty as application server. Liberty package contains log4j binaries, however they are not used by Liberty & IBM QRadar Network Security. Since Liberty is not impacted by log4j vulnerabilities, XGS is also not impacted.

https://www.ibm.com/blogs/psirt/an-update-on-the-apache-log4j-cve-2021-44228-vulnerability/

Vulnerability Details

**CVEID:**CVE-2021-4104
**DESCRIPTION:**JMSAppender in Log4j 1.2 is vulnerable to deserialization of untrusted data when the attacker has write access to the Log4j configuration. The attacker can provide TopicBindingName and TopicConnectionFactoryBindingName configurations causing JMSAppender to perform JNDI requests that result in remote code execution in a similar fashion to CVE-2021-44228. Note this issue only affects Log4j 1.2 when specifically configured to use JMSAppender, which is not the default. Apache Log4j 1.2 reached end of life in August 2015. Users should upgrade to Log4j 2 as it addresses numerous other issues from the previous versions.

**CVEID:**CVE-2021-44228
**DESCRIPTION:**Apache Log4j2 2.0-beta9 through 2.12.1 and 2.13.0 through 2.15.0 JNDI features used in configuration, log messages, and parameters do not protect against attacker controlled LDAP and other JNDI related endpoints. An attacker who can control log messages or log message parameters can execute arbitrary code loaded from LDAP servers when message lookup substitution is enabled. From log4j 2.15.0, this behavior has been disabled by default. From version 2.16.0, this functionality has been completely removed. Note that this vulnerability is specific to log4j-core and does not affect log4net, log4cxx, or other Apache Logging Services projects.

**CVEID:**CVE-2021-45046
**DESCRIPTION:**It was found that the fix to address CVE-2021-44228 in Apache Log4j 2.15.0 was incomplete in certain non-default configurations. This could allows attackers with control over Thread Context Map (MDC) input data when the logging configuration uses a non-default Pattern Layout with either a Context Lookup (for example, $${ctx:loginId}) or a Thread Context Map pattern (%X, %mdc, or %MDC) to craft malicious input data using a JNDI Lookup pattern resulting in an information leak and remote code execution in some environments and local code execution in all environments. Log4j 2.16.0 (Java 8) and 2.12.2 (Java 7) fix this issue by removing support for message lookup patterns and disabling JNDI functionality by default.

**CVEID:**CVE-2021-45105
**DESCRIPTION:**Apache Log4j2 versions 2.0-alpha1 through 2.16.0 (excluding 2.12.3) did not protect from uncontrolled recursion from self-referential lookups. This allows an attacker with control over Thread Context Map data to cause a denial of service when a crafted string is interpreted. This issue was fixed in Log4j 2.17.0 and 2.12.3.

Affected Products and Versions

IBM QRadar Network Security 5.4.0

IBM QRadar Network Security 5.5.0

Workarounds and Mitigations

None