Hacking

Many enterprise apps affected by flaws in Oracle OIT libraries

18 out of 276 vulnerabilities fixed by Oracle with the last Patch Update resides in the OIT libraries that are used by products of numerous major vendors.

The last critical Patch Update released by Oracle this week is in the headlines for the number of patches it includes. It includes the fixes for 276 vulnerabilities, 19 of them that have been rated critical could expose the products of multiple vendors to cyber attacks.

The security vulnerabilities were reported by researchers at Cisco Talos.

17 high severity flaws affect the Oracle Outside In Technology (OIT) that is a Fusion Middleware suite of software development kits (SDKs) that can decode over 500 different file formats.

Security experts believe that the flaws could have a serious impact also on several third-party applications that use  the OIT libraries, including products Avira, HPE, IBM, Google, Microsoft, Novell, Raytheon, and Symantec.

The experts from Cisco are not able to confirm which third-party products leveraging on the OIT libraries  are vulnerable to cyber attacks, but for sure some of them are impacted.

Researchers reported some attack scenarios easy to exploit by attackers, for example, Exchange 2013 and earlier could be hacked by sending a malicious email attachment to the targeted user. The unique precondition is that the WebReady Document Viewing feature is enabled in Microsoft Exchange 2013 and earlier, an attacker can exploit the vulnerabilities simply by sending a malicious email attachment to the targeted user.

In the case of the Avira AntiVir for Exchange, the popular AV solution automatically scans all inbound and outbound email, this means that an attacker can trigger the vulnerability by sending or receiving a specifically-crafted message.

In January, the US-CERT published a security advisory warning about the presence of multiple stack buffer overflows in the Oracle Outside In 8.5.2. The advisory focused on the flaws in the parsers for WK4, Doc and Paradox DB files. CERT/CC reported at the time that the flaws had affected products from most of the vendors that leveraged the Oracle SDKs.

In that case, the CERT confirmed that the OIT libraries are used by a variety of applications, including Microsoft Exchange, Google Search Appliance, Oracle Fusion Middleware, Guidance Encase Forensics, AccessData FTK, and Novell Groupwise.

Experts from CISCO Talos highlighted that the vendors could take time to test and update their products that use the OIT libraries, in this scenario hackers could try to exploit the flaws in third-party products.

“However, the unfortunate reality is that vulnerabilities that are found in an SDK that is utilized by third-parties will take additional time to patch: First the organization that maintains the SDK issues a fix, and some amount of time later, third-parties that utilize the SDK provide an update to their customers including these fixes. This provides a rather large window of time in which miscreants can exploit vulnerabilities in third-party products. ” reads the analysis published by Cisco Talos.

[adrotate banner=”9″]

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – hacking, OIT libraries)

Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.

Recent Posts

American fast-fashion firm Hot Topic hit by credential stuffing attacks

Hot Topic suffered credential stuffing attacks that exposed customers' personal information and partial payment data.…

2 hours ago

Cisco addressed high-severity flaws in IOS and IOS XE software

Cisco addressed multiple vulnerabilities in IOS and IOS XE software that can be exploited to…

16 hours ago

Google: China dominates government exploitation of zero-day vulnerabilities in 2023

Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) and Mandiant reported a surge in the number of actively…

22 hours ago

Google addressed 2 Chrome zero-days demonstrated at Pwn2Own 2024

Google addressed two zero-day vulnerabilities in the Chrome web browser that have been demonstrated during…

1 day ago

INC Ransom stole 3TB of data from the National Health Service (NHS) of Scotland

The INC Ransom extortion group hacked the National Health Service (NHS) of Scotland and is threatening…

2 days ago

CISA adds Microsoft SharePoint bug disclosed at Pwn2Own to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog

U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) adds a Microsoft SharePoint vulnerability disclosed at the…

2 days ago

This website uses cookies.