IBM QRadar SIEM Unauthenticated Remote Code Execution
Posted on 11 July 2018
IBM QRadar SIEM has three vulnerabilities in the Forensics web application that when chained together allow an attacker to achieve unauthenticated remote code execution. The first stage bypasses authentication by fixating session cookies. The second stage uses those authenticated sessions cookies to write a file to disk and execute that file as the "nobody" user. The third and final stage occurs when the file executed as "nobody" writes an entry into the database that causes QRadar to execute a shell script controlled by the attacker as root within the next minute. Details about these vulnerabilities can be found in the advisories listed in References. The Forensics web application is disabled in QRadar Community Edition, but the code still works, so these vulnerabilities can be exploited in all flavors of QRadar. This Metasploit module was tested with IBM QRadar CE 7.3.0 and 7.3.1. IBM has confirmed versions up to 7.2.8 patch 12 and 7.3.1 patch 3 are vulnerable. Due to payload constraints, this module only runs a generic/shell_reverse_tcp payload.
