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Authorization Bypass in RegexRequestMatcher (CVE-2022-22978)

cve-2022 | Level: Easy  | Total Lab Runs: 0 | Premium Lab

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What is Spring Security?

Spring Security is a powerful and highly customizable authentication and access-control framework. It is the de-facto standard for securing Spring-based applications.

Spring Security is a framework that focuses on providing both authentication and authorization to Java applications. Like all Spring projects, the real power of Spring Security is found in how easily it can be extended to meet custom requirements.

Reference: https://spring.io/projects/spring-security


Authorization Bypass in RegexRequestMatcher (CVE-2022-22978)

In Spring Security versions 5.5.6 and 5.6.3 and older unsupported versions, RegexRequestMatcher can easily be misconfigured to be bypassed on some servlet containers. Applications using RegexRequestMatcher with . in the regular expression are possibly vulnerable to an authorization bypass.

Reference: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-22978

NVD has assigned a base score of 9.8 (Critical) to this vulnerability!


The vulnerability

Applications using RegexRequestMatcher with a regular expression that contains . (as well as *) are likely vulnerable to an authorization bypass for versions:

  • Spring Security

    • 5.5.x prior to 5.5.7

    • 5.6.x prior to 5.6.4

    • Earlier unsupported versions

Reference: https://tanzu.vmware.com/security/cve-2022-22978


Lab Environment

In this lab environment, the user is going to get access to a low-privileged user in an Ubuntu CLI instance. The root user on the same Ubuntu instance is hosting an application leveraging Spring Security, that is vulnerable to CVE-2022-22978and is accessible from the tools installed on the Ubuntu machine at http://127.0.0.1:8080.

Objective: Exploit the authorization bypass in RegexRequestMatcher, in the vulnerable Spring Security-based application to access the restricted endpoint - /admin/index.


Acknowledgements

The setup code is based on the following Github repository:

Instructions:

  • This lab is dedicated to you! No other users are on this network :) 

  • Once you start the lab, you will have access to a root terminal of a Kali instance

  • Your Kali has an interface with IP address 192.X.Y.Z. Run "ip addr" to know the values of X and Y.

  • The target server should be located at the IP address 192.X.Y.3. It can be accessed using the hostname demo.ine.local

  • Do not attack the gateway located at IP address 192.X.Y.1


Verify:
1. Flag from the /admin/index endpoint
 

The following activities are strictly prohibited on this website unless otherwise explicitly stated as allowed in the mission statement:

  • Using automated scanners
  • Using brute force attacks
  • Denial of Service attacks
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  • Attacking the lab infrastructure

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