Security Bulletin: Vulnerability in zlib affects IBM SAN Volume Controller, IBM Storwize, IBM Spectrum Virtualize and IBM FlashSystem products

Summary

A vulnerability in the zlib package used by IBM Spectrum Virtualize may result in a denial of service for the whole application if an attacker is able to inject crafted input.

Vulnerability Details

CVEID:CVE-2018-25032
**DESCRIPTION:**Zlib is vulnerable to a denial of service, caused by a memory corruption in the deflate operation. By using many distant matches, a remote attacker could exploit this vulnerability to cause the application to crash.
CVSS Base score: 7.5
CVSS Temporal Score: See: https://exchange.xforce.ibmcloud.com/vulnerabilities/222615 for the current score.
CVSS Vector: (CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H)

Affected Products and Versions

Note that this applies to all IBM SAN Volume Controller, IBM Storwize and IBM FlashSystem products which run IBM Spectrum Virtualize software.

Remediation/Fixes

IBM recommends that you fix this vulnerability by upgrading affected versions of IBM SAN Volume Controller, IBM Storwize V7000, IBM Storwize V5000 and V5100, IBM Storwize V5000E, IBM Spectrum Virtualize Software, IBM Spectrum Virtualize for Public Cloud, IBM FlashSystem V9000, IBM FlashSystem 9500, IBM FlashSystem 9100 Family, IBM FlashSystem 9200, IBM FlashSystem 7300, IBM FlashSystem 7200, IBM FlashSystem 5200 and IBM FlashSystem 5000 to the following code levels or higher:

8.5.2.0

8.5.0.5

8.4.0.7

8.3.1.8

8.2.1.16

7.8.1.16

Latest IBM SAN Volume Controller Code
Latest IBM Storwize V7000 Code
Latest IBM Storwize V5000 and V5100 Code
Latest IBM Storwize V5000E Code
Latest IBM FlashSystem V9000 Code
Latest IBM FlashSystem 9500 Code
Latest IBM FlashSystem 9100 Family Code
Latest IBM FlashSystem 9200 Code
Latest IBM FlashSystem 7300 Code
Latest IBM FlashSystem 7200 Code
Latest IBM FlashSystem 5000 and 5200 Code
Latest IBM Spectrum Virtualize Software
Latest IBM Spectrum Virtualize for Public Cloud

Workarounds and Mitigations

This requires the compression feature to be in use, falling back to software-only compression because hardware accelerated compression isn’t working and for an attacker to have access to inject deliberately crafted I/O to exploit the vulnerability - or for such an I/O workload to be ran accidentally.

The vulnerability can therefore be mitigated simply by resolving any errors involving compression hardware - or not using compression at all - and is unlikely to be exploited even in that event.