An attacker must have access to the server where Oracle VM VirtualBox is installed. Access to certain low-privileged accounts (such as domain users) may be needed. Due to the nature of the vulnerability, privileged user accounts are likely targeted. An attacker can compromise a privileged user account and compromise Oracle VM VirtualBox. This can be done by exploiting one of the following: Improperly enforced permissions on a vulnerable component - A low privileged user can exploit a vulnerability by dropping permissions to the application or by creating a low privileged user account and using that account to exploit the application.

- A low privileged user can exploit a vulnerability by dropping permissions to the application or by creating a low privileged user account and using that account to exploit the application. Injection - An attacker can compromise a privileged user account and exploit the application by injecting malicious code through a web form or API.

- An attacker can compromise a privileged user account and exploit the application by injecting malicious code through a web form or API. Bypassing Input Validation - An attacker can compromise a privileged user account and exploit the application by bypassing input validation. In order to exploit this vulnerability, an attacker must have access to a privileged user account. Access to low-privileged accounts may be needed

Potential Impact of this Vulnerability

An attacker who compromises a privileged user account is able to compromise Oracle VM VirtualBox. This can be done by exploiting one of the following: Improperly enforced permissions on a vulnerable component - A low privileged user can exploit a vulnerability by dropping permissions to the application or by creating a low privileged user account and using that account to exploit the application.
- A low privileged user can exploit a vulnerability by dropping permissions to the application or by creating a low privileged user account and using that account to exploit the application. Injection - An attacker can compromise a privileged user account and exploit the application by injecting malicious code through a web form or API.
- An attacker can compromise a privileged user account and exploit the application by injecting malicious code through a web form or API. Bypassing Input Validation - An attacker can compromise a privileged user account and exploit the application by bypassing input validation.

Oracle VM VirtualBox Vulnerability Characterization

The following is a summary of the main methods an attacker can use to compromise Oracle VM VirtualBox:
1. Injection - An attacker can compromise a privileged user account and exploit the application by injecting malicious code through a web form or API
2. Bypassing Input Validation - An attacker can compromise a privileged user account and exploit the application by bypassing input validation
3. Improperly enforced permissions on a vulnerable component

Technical Description

This vulnerability occurs because Oracle VirtualBox does not properly validate the return value of user input. An attacker can exploit this vulnerability by convincing a low privileged account to send specially crafted requests to Oracle VM VirtualBox, which can lead to arbitrary code execution with system privileges. The security risk of the vulnerability is estimated to be high.

A low privileged user account is an account that has fewer privileges than the root account. This can include accounts for users in certain roles such as the Guest or Network Service accounts.

How to Determine if Your System Is Vulnerable to CVE-2022-21465

To determine whether your system is vulnerable to CVE-2022-21465, you can use the following steps:

1. Download and run a copy of the Oracle VM VirtualBox application on an unaffected machine (a clean machine).
2. Create a new VM and select Linux as the operating system. For this example, we will create a VM with Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial) running as guest OS.
3. While booting into the guest OS, launch sudo su – to become root and then export VBOX_GUEST_DRIVER=OVMF to override the driver used by Oracle VM VirtualBox while it's running in guest mode on Linux.
4. Close down Linux and then open Oracle VM VirtualBox again in guest mode on the same desktop (to ensure that no changes were made that would affect capabilities of affected machines).
5. In the guest OS, start VBoxManage showvminfo to get more information about your virtual hardware configuration as shown below:
6. Check for any changes made to your virtual hardware configuration since you last booted into Linux using VBoxManage showvminfo . If there are changes, these may indicate that your system is vulnerable to CVE-2022-21465 .

Timeline

Published on: 04/19/2022 21:15:00 UTC
Last modified on: 05/02/2022 19:39:00 UTC

References