CVE-2024-23794: Privilege Escalation Vulnerability in OTRS Inline Editing Functionality

In this post, we will discuss a recently discovered vulnerability in the inline editing functionality of OTRS (CVE-2024-23794). The issue affects several versions of OTRS and leads to an incorrect privilege assignment that can potentially be exploited to escalate privileges. We will delve into the technical details of this vulnerability, provide code snippets, and enumerate the affected versions to help you understand the impact of this security issue.

Vulnerability Details

CVE-2024-23794 is a privilege escalation vulnerability resulting from an incorrect privilege assignment within the inline editing feature of the OTRS ticketing system. This flaw allows an OTRS agent with read-only permissions to potentially gain full access to a ticket, bypassing the expected permission restrictions.

The vulnerability arises in very rare instances when a system administrator has enabled the 'RequiredLock' setting of 'AgentFrontend::Ticket::InlineEditing::Property###Watch' within the system configuration.

Technical Analysis

The privilege escalation happens due to an incorrect permission assignment within the inline editing functionality of OTRS. When the 'RequiredLock' is enabled for 'AgentFrontend::Ticket::InlineEditing::Property###Watch', agents are, in rare cases, able to edit and update tickets despite having read-only access.

To exploit this vulnerability, an attacker with read-only permissions can use the inline editing feature to manipulate ticket properties and potentially gain full access to the ticket. This may enable the attacker to perform unauthorized actions, tampering with tickets, and potentially compromising sensitive information.

Consider the following code snippet demonstrating how the incorrect privilege assignment occurs

# Incorrect privilege assignment
my $AgentFrontendTicketInlineEditing = $ConfigObject->Get('AgentFrontend::Ticket::InlineEditing');
...
if ( $AgentFrontendTicketInlineEditing->{ 'Property###' . $Param{Type} }->{RequiredLock} ) {
    ...
}

The attacker navigates to an existing ticket and clicks the "Edit" button.

3. Using the inline editing feature, the attacker gains full access to the ticket and can now modify it, bypassing the read-only permission restriction.

Mitigation and Solutions

To mitigate this vulnerability, system administrators should disable the 'RequiredLock' setting for 'AgentFrontend::Ticket::InlineEditing::Property###Watch' in the system configuration by following these steps:

Save the changes and clear the cache.

Additionally, the OTRS development team has released patches for the affected versions to address this security issue. It is highly recommended to update the OTRS system to the latest patched version to prevent potential exploitation of CVE-2024-23794.

Conclusion

CVE-2024-23794 is a serious vulnerability that affects the inline editing functionality in specific OTRS versions, potentially leading to privilege escalation. By understanding the implications of this issue and taking the appropriate steps to mitigate it, system administrators can prevent unauthorized access and protect their systems from potential security risks.

For more information about this vulnerability, please refer to the original disclosure

* OTRS Security Advisory
* CVE-2024-23794

Timeline

Published on: 07/15/2024 08:15:02 UTC
Last modified on: 08/01/2024 23:13:07 UTC