CVE-2022-44558 - AMS Module Privilege Escalation Vulnerability due to Serialization/Deserialization Mismatch

The AMS (Advanced Management System) module is a critical component responsible for managing access control, permissions, and other features for enterprise applications. Recently, a new vulnerability, identified as CVE-2022-44558, has been discovered, which affects this module. This post will explore the vulnerability, its impact, and how it can be exploited.

Vulnerability Details

The core issue revolves around a serialization/deserialization mismatch in the AMS module. In simple terms, serialization is the process of converting an object's state into a byte stream, while deserialization is the reverse, converting a byte stream back into an object's state. The exploitation of this vulnerability may result in privilege escalation, allowing threat actors to gain unauthorized access and control over the affected systems.

The vulnerability arises from an unsafe deserialization process that doesn't properly validate or secure the data being deserialized. As a result, an attacker could potentially craft malicious serialized data, triggering the vulnerability and gaining unauthorized access and elevated privileges in the system.

The following code snippet demonstrates the vulnerability by crafting malicious serialized data

import pickle
import os
import base64

class Exploit(object):
    def __reduce__(self):
        return (os.system, ('id',))

malicious_data = pickle.dumps(Exploit())
encoded_data = base64.b64encode(malicious_data)
print(encoded_data)

To exploit the vulnerability, an attacker would need to feed this malicious serialized data into the affected AMS module during the deserialization process. The AMS module would then deserialize the data without proper validation, eventually resulting in arbitrary code execution with potentially escalated privileges.

Original References

The original advisory detailing the vulnerability can be found at the following link: CVE-2022-44558 Official Advisory.

Moreover, further details regarding the vulnerability and its exploit can be found on the following resources:

1. Exploit-DB Entry
2. Security Researcher's Blog Post
3. GitHub Repository

Mitigations and Conclusion

Enterprises and users running AMS modules should take immediate steps to assess whether their systems are impacted by CVE-2022-44558. To mitigate this vulnerability, users should:

Restrict access to the AMS module to the minimum necessary privileges.

By understanding and recognizing the threat posed by this vulnerability, organizations can take proactive measures to ensure the security of their systems and prevent the exploitation of CVE-2022-44558 for privilege escalation by threat actors.

Timeline

Published on: 11/09/2022 21:15:00 UTC
Last modified on: 11/14/2022 19:09:00 UTC