Recent findings have unveiled three significant security vulnerabilities in Azure HDInsight, particularly affecting its Apache Hadoop, Kafka, and Spark services. These vulnerabilities could potentially be exploited to facilitate privilege escalation and launch a regular expression denial-of-service (ReDoS) attack, leaving systems vulnerable to unauthorized access and operational disruption.
The flaws primarily impact authenticated users accessing Azure HDInsight services, including Apache Ambari and Apache Oozie. According to Orca Security researcher Lidor Ben Shitrit, the vulnerabilities were documented in a technical report shared with The Hacker News, highlighting a notable security risk for businesses relying on these cloud services.
The identified vulnerabilities include CVE-2023-36419, which scores 8.8 on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) and pertains to an XML External Entity (XXE) injection flaw within Apache Oozie. Another critical vulnerability, CVE-2023-38156, rated at 7.2, involves a Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) injection issue in Apache Ambari. A third vulnerability, while not given a CVE designation, relates to the ReDoS issues linked to Apache Oozie.
Authenticated attackers possessing access to the targeted HDI cluster may exploit these privilege escalation vulnerabilities by sending carefully crafted network requests to gain elevated administrative privileges. This scenario underscores possible tactics such as initial access and privilege escalation from the MITRE ATT&CK framework, illustrating how attackers could leverage these flaws to strengthen their foothold within the environment.
The XXE vulnerability stems from inadequate validation of user input, allowing attackers to access root-level files and escalate privileges. Meanwhile, the JDBC injection flaw poses a risk as it can potentially be used to create reverse shells at the root level, effectively granting adversaries significant control over targeted systems.
Furthermore, the ReDoS vulnerability is attributed to insufficient input validation, enabling attackers to generate excessive request responses that engage the system in time-consuming loops, leading to denial-of-service conditions. Successful exploitation could impede system operations, degrade performance, and detrimentally affect service availability.
In response to these serious vulnerabilities, Microsoft has taken prompt action following responsible disclosure, releasing security updates on October 26, 2023. This move comes nearly five months after Orca highlighted several flaws in Azure HDInsight that could be exploited for unauthorized data access and session hijacking. Effective cybersecurity practices must be reinforced to safeguard against such vulnerabilities, given the continually evolving threat landscape.
As organizations leverage cloud-based solutions like Azure HDInsight, understanding the associated risks and potential attack vectors is essential. The MITRE ATT&CK framework identifies pivotal adversary tactics, including initial access and privilege escalation, that could potentially facilitate the exploitation of these vulnerabilities, underscoring the necessity for stringent security measures and regular updates to mitigate risks effectively.
