SUMMARY Vulnerability found in: IBM WebSphere Host On-Demand (HOD) Type: Unauthorized, remote access to HOD administration pages Applies to: Version 6.0, 7.0, 8.0, and 9.0 (possibly 10.0) Severity Level: High Exploit Difficulty: Very Low Initial Vendor Notification: approximately 11/3/2006 Discovered By: Dave Ferguson, FishNet Security Secunia advisory location: http://secunia.com/advisories/22652 BACKGROUND IBM's WebSphere Host On-Demand (HOD) provides a framework for accessing host applications and data from a Java-enabled web browser. The HOD administration pages consist of a set of Java applets. One applet controls user authentication. Others allow you to start and stop services, manage users, configure telnet redirectors, set up LDAP service, and manage licenses. Information about HOD can be found here: http://www-306.ibm.com/software/webservers/hostondemand. VULNERABILITY OVERVIEW FishNet Security discovered that a remote, unauthenticated user can access and interact with several of the HOD administration applets. Essentially, a simple URL manipulation attack can bypass the authentication and authorization process. This was found in HOD versions 6.0, 7.0, 8.0, and 9.0. Version 10 (released in 2006) may also be vulnerable, but was not tested. DETAILS The applet that handles user authentication is normally located at the following URL: https://server/hod/HODAdmin.html. Once this page loads and the applet is running, the URL showing in the web browser reads something like this: https://server/hod/frameset.html?Java2=true,Obplet=object,cshe=false,pnl =Logon,hgt=480,wth=640,full=fa lse,BrowserLocale=en.there. The web page displays an area for the user to logon and a menu on the left side with several links to other pages/applets. Each of these links is disabled. The links are: - Introduction - Users/Groups - Services - Redirector Service - Directory Service - OS/400 Proxy Server - Licenses - Logoff To bypass the authentication process, you change the value of "pnl" in the current URL. For example, to see the OS/400 Proxy Server page, you would change the pnl parameter from "Logon" to "os400proxy". The page loads and the functionality of the applet appears to be normal in every way. The other links in the menu become enabled, so changing the URL manually is no longer necessary. Two of the pages/applets seem to have additional access control, because the applets remain blank and/or empty and can't be used. Pages that could be accessed in an unauthenticated state: Services, Redirector Service, Directory Service, and OS/400 Proxy Server Pages that could NOT be accessed: Users/Groups and Licenses ATTACK SCENARIOS An attacker can perpetrate a number of actions: - stopping critical HOD services - reconfiguring existing services (e.g., port numbers, ip addresses) - creating and starting unnecessary services - changing the security configuration for redirectors - creating a user to administer the LDAP service Any of these could have an adverse effect on business operations and/or allow a malicious person to open more potential attack vectors. VENDOR RESPONSE Secunia notified IBM about this vulnerability around 11/3/2006. No response has been received. CONTACT You can reach the author of this advisory at: dave.ferguson[at]fishnetsecurity(dot)com