CVE-2023-21984: Vulnerability in Oracle Solaris Libraries Leading to Complete DoS

Oracle Solaris is a Unix-based operating system developed by Oracle Corporation for enterprise purposes. It is widely used for running mission-critical applications on high-performance servers. A vulnerability has been discovered in Oracle Solaris, affecting the Libraries component. The vulnerability, identified as CVE-2023-21984, allows a low privileged attacker to cause a denial of service (DoS) condition. This post will provide an in-depth analysis of the vulnerability, its exploitation, and possible mitigation steps.

Vulnerability Description

A vulnerability, assigned as CVE-2023-21984, lies in the Oracle Solaris product of Oracle Systems (component: Libraries). The supported version that is affected is 11. This easily exploitable vulnerability allows a low privileged attacker with network access via HTTP to compromise Oracle Solaris. Successful exploitation of this vulnerability can result in unauthorized ability to cause a hang or frequently repeatable crash (complete DOS) of Oracle Solaris.

The vulnerability has a CVSS 3.1 base score of 6.5, mainly impacting the availability of the system. The CVSS vector is given as (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H).

Exploit Details

Although the specific details of the exploit are not publicly available, an attacker with low privileges could exploit the vulnerable Libraries component of Oracle Solaris via HTTP. This could lead to a complete DoS condition where the affected Oracle Solaris system would either hang or crash repeatedly.

Code Snippet

While the actual exploit code is not available, below is a generic example of a potential HTTP request that could be used to exploit the vulnerability:

GET /vulnerable-library-path HTTP/1.1
Host: target.oracle.solaris
User-Agent: Exploit-CVE-2023-21984
Connection: close

This code snippet is an illustration only and should not be used for exploiting any systems.

Original References

1. Oracle Security Advisory: https://www.oracle.com/security-alerts/cpuoct2023.html
2. CVE Details Page: https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2023-21984
3. National Vulnerability Database: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-21984

Mitigation Steps

Oracle has released a security patch to address this vulnerability, and it is highly recommended to apply the updated patch as soon as possible. Additionally, the following best practices should be followed for securing Oracle Solaris systems:

Monitor system logs for any suspicious activity, such as repeated crashes or hangs.

- Implement strict authentication and authorization controls to prevent unauthorized users from exploiting the Libraries component.

Conclusion

The discovered vulnerability in Oracle Solaris Libraries, CVE-2023-21984, is a serious threat to the availability of the affected systems. Implementing proper security measures, such as timely applying the released security patch and following secure access control protocols, can help mitigate the risk posed by this vulnerability.

Timeline

Published on: 04/18/2023 20:15:00 UTC
Last modified on: 04/18/2023 20:37:00 UTC