Vulnerabilities > CVE-2020-1978 - Insufficiently Protected Credentials vulnerability in Paloaltonetworks Pan-Os and Vm-Series
Summary
TechSupport files generated on Palo Alto Networks VM Series firewalls for Microsoft Azure platform configured with high availability (HA) inadvertently collect Azure dashboard service account credentials. These credentials are equivalent to the credentials associated with the Contributor role in Azure. A user with the credentials will be able to manage all the Azure resources in the subscription except for granting access to other resources. These credentials do not allow login access to the VMs themselves. This issue affects VM Series Plugin versions before 1.0.9 for PAN-OS 9.0. This issue does not affect VM Series in non-HA configurations or on other cloud platforms. It does not affect hardware firewall appliances. Since becoming aware of the issue, Palo Alto Networks has safely deleted all the tech support files with the credentials. We now filter and remove these credentials from all TechSupport files sent to us. The TechSupport files uploaded to Palo Alto Networks systems were only accessible by authorized personnel with valid Palo Alto Networks credentials. We do not have any evidence of malicious access or use of these credentials.
Vulnerable Configurations
| Part | Description | Count |
|---|---|---|
| OS | 1 | |
| Application | 2 |
Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE)
Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC)
- Session Sidejacking Session sidejacking takes advantage of an unencrypted communication channel between a victim and target system. The attacker sniffs traffic on a network looking for session tokens in unencrypted traffic. Once a session token is captured, the attacker performs malicious actions by using the stolen token with the targeted application to impersonate the victim. This attack is a specific method of session hijacking, which is exploiting a valid session token to gain unauthorized access to a target system or information. Other methods to perform a session hijacking are session fixation, cross-site scripting, or compromising a user or server machine and stealing the session token.
- Lifting credential(s)/key material embedded in client distributions (thick or thin) An attacker examines a target application's code or configuration files to find credential or key material that has been embedded within the application or its files. Many services require authentication with their users for the various purposes including billing, access control or attribution. Some client applications store the user's authentication credentials or keys to accelerate the login process. Some clients may have built-in keys or credentials (in which case the server is authenticating with the client, rather than the user). If the attacker is able to locate where this information is stored, they may be able to retrieve these credentials. The attacker could then use these stolen credentials to impersonate the user or client, respectively, in interactions with the service or use stolen keys to eavesdrop on nominally secure communications between the client and server.
- Password Recovery Exploitation An attacker may take advantage of the application feature to help users recover their forgotten passwords in order to gain access into the system with the same privileges as the original user. Generally password recovery schemes tend to be weak and insecure. Most of them use only one security question . For instance, mother's maiden name tends to be a fairly popular one. Unfortunately in many cases this information is not very hard to find, especially if the attacker knows the legitimate user. These generic security questions are also re-used across many applications, thus making them even more insecure. An attacker could for instance overhear a coworker talking to a bank representative at the work place and supplying their mother's maiden name for verification purposes. An attacker can then try to log in into one of the victim's accounts, click on "forgot password" and there is a good chance that the security question there will be to provide mother's maiden name. A weak password recovery scheme totally undermines the effectiveness of a strong password scheme.