Four cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities and two SQL injection (SQLi) vulnerabilities were found in the products of four network management system (NMS) vendors.
Network Management Systems are software applications commonly used by system or network administrators (SysAdmins) to search, gather and manage information about devices and other parts connected to a specific network.
NMSs handle the data collected via the SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) protocol and transmit the information through user-friendly interfaces.
According to independent security researcher Matthew Kienow and Rapid7 researcher Deral Heiland, four popular NMS systems are vulnerable to attacks by malicious actors, who can gain access to applications and use them to conduct further attacks.
Given that NMSs are included in the whitelist of most security products, attackers who manage to compromise these systems have a higher likelihood of carrying out successful attacks on a company's internal network than if they originate from an external source.
Four XSS vulnerabilities and two SQLi vulnerabilities affect the NMSs
The affected software vendors are Spiceworks (XSS), Opsview (XSS), Ipswitch (XSS + SQLi), and Castle Rock Computing (XSS + SQLi). Except for Castle Rock Computing, all other security software vendors have released patches for the affected products.
According to researchers, the XSS vulnerabilities that were discovered can potentially allow the interception of information about user sessions, while SQL injection flaws allow attackers to gain access to the underlying database. If such a thing is achieved, intercepting information about connected devices becomes much easier and faster, and depending on the database version and how it is configured, attackers can also gain elevated privileges on the server.
