The recently discovered CVE-2022-37866 vulnerability affects Apache Ivy versions 2.. to 2.5.. Apache Ivy is a popular dependency management tool often used in combination with Apache Ant build system. The vulnerability is a Path Traversal vulnerability that allows an attacker to store malicious artifacts outside of Ivy's local cache or repository. This, in turn, can lead to potential data loss, overwriting of important files, or unauthorized access to sensitive information.

Say the user-supplied pattern is

[organisation]/[module]/[version]/[artifact].[ext]

and the remote repository returns a malicious artifact with these coordinates

organisation: com.example
module: mymodule
version: 1../../../../../../../etc/myproject
artifact: myartifact
ext: jar

Then the resulting file path would look like this

com.example/mymodule/1../../../../../../../etc/myproject/myartifact.jar

which actually translates to

/etc/myproject/myartifact.jar

The issue occurs because the "../" sequences, which are valid characters for Ivy coordinates, can be used to navigate to any directory on the local filesystem.

Exploit Details & Requirements

In order to exploit this vulnerability, an attacker would need collaboration from a remote repository. Ivy issues HTTP requests containing ".." sequences. A "normal" repository would not interpret them as part of the artifact coordinates. Therefore, if the remote repository is in control of the attacker or crafted to serve malicious artifacts, then exploiting CVE-2022-37866 is more likely.

Mitigation

Users of Apache Ivy 2.. to 2.5. are strongly encouraged to upgrade to Ivy 2.5.1 to address this vulnerability. This is a simple fix which prevents the possibility of Path Traversal, ultimately hardening the security of your projects.

References

1. Apache Ivy project: https://ant.apache.org/ivy/
2. CVE-2022-37866 Details: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-37866
3. Apache Ivy 2.5.1 Release Notes: https://ant.apache.org/ivy/history/2.5.1/release-notes.html

In conclusion, it is important to be mindful of path traversal vulnerabilities when using tools such as Apache Ivy for dependency management. Ensuring that you are using the latest, most secure versions of these tools can greatly reduce your risk of data breaches and other security incidents.

Timeline

Published on: 11/07/2022 14:15:00 UTC
Last modified on: 11/09/2022 21:01:00 UTC