(RHSA-2014:0204) Low: Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6.2.1 security update

Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6 is a platform for Java
applications based on JBoss Application Server 7.

It was found that the security audit functionality, as provided by Red Hat
JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6, logged request parameters in plain
text. This may have caused passwords to be included in the audit log files
when using BASIC or FORM-based authentication. A local attacker with access
to audit log files could possibly use this flaw to obtain application or
server authentication credentials. (CVE-2014-0058)

The provided patch to fix CVE-2014-0058 also allows greater control over
which of the following components of web requests are captured in audit
logs:

• parameters
• cookies
• headers
• attributes

It is also possible to selectively mask some elements of headers,
parameters, cookies, and attributes using masks. This capability is
provided by two system properties, which are introduced by this patch:

1. org.jboss.security.web.audit

Description:
This property controls the granularity of the security auditing of web
requests.

Possible values:
off = Disables auditing of web requests
headers = Audits only the headers of web requests
cookies = Audits only the cookies of web requests
parameters = Audits only the parameters of web requests
attributes = Audits only the attributes of web requests
headers,cookies,parameters = Audits the headers, cookies, and parameters of
web requests
headers,cookies = Audits the headers and cookies of web requests

Default Value:
headers, parameters

Examples:
Setting “org.jboss.security.web.audit=off” disables security auditing of
web requests entirely.
Setting “org.jboss.security.web.audit=headers” enables security auditing of
only headers in web requests.

2. org.jboss.security.web.audit.mask

Description:
This property can be used to specify a list of strings to be matched
against headers, parameters, cookies, and attributes of web requests.
Any element matching the specified masks will be excluded from security
audit logging.

Possible values:
Any comma separated string indicating keys of headers, parameters, cookies,
and attributes.

Default Value:
j_password, authorization

Note that currently the matching of the masks is fuzzy rather than strict.
For example, a mask of “authorization” will mask both the header called
authorization and the parameter called “custom_authorization”. A future
release may introduce strict masks.

Warning: Before applying this update, back up your existing Red Hat JBoss
Enterprise Application Platform installation and deployed applications.

All users of Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6.2.1 on Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 5 and 6 are advised to upgrade to these updated packages.
The JBoss server process must be restarted for the update to take effect.