Deserialization of Untrusted Data vulnerability in Apache Storm.
Versions Affected: before 2.8.6.
Description: When processing topology credentials submitted via the Nimbus Thrift API, Storm deserializes the base64-encoded TGT blob using ObjectInputStream.readObject() without any class filtering or validation. An authenticated user with topology submission rights could supply a crafted serialized object in the "TGT" credential field, leading to remote code execution in both the Nimbus and Worker JVMs.
Mitigation: 2.x users should upgrade to 2.8.6.
Users who cannot upgrade immediately should monkey-patch an ObjectInputFilter allow-list to ClientAuthUtils.deserializeKerberosTicket() restricting deserialized classes to javax.security.auth.kerberos.KerberosTicket and its known dependencies. A guide on how to do this is available in the release notes of 2.8.6.
Credit: This issue was discovered by K.
On unix-like systems, the temporary directory is shared between all user. As such, writing to this directory using APIs that do not explicitly set the file/directory permissions can lead to information disclosure. Of note, this does not impact modern MacOS Operating Systems.
The method File.createTempFile on unix-like systems creates a file with predefined name (so easily identifiable) and by default will create this file with the permissions -rw-r--r--. Thus, if sensitive information is written to this file, other local users can read this information.
File.createTempFile(String, String) will create a temporary file in the system temporary directory if the 'java.io.tmpdir' system property is not explicitly set.
This affects the class https://github.com/apache/storm/blob/master/storm-core/src/jvm/org/apache/storm/utils/TopologySpoutLag.java#L99 and was introduced by https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/STORM-3123
In practice, this has a very limited impact as this class is used only if ui.disable.spout.lag.monitoring
is set to false, but its value is true by default. Moreover, the temporary file gets deleted soon after its creation.
The solution is to use Files.createTempFile https://docs.oracle.com/en/java/javase/11/docs/api/java.base/java/nio/file/Files.html#createTempFile(java.lang.String,java.lang.String,java.nio.file.attribute.FileAttribute...) instead.
We recommend that all users upgrade to the latest version of Apache Storm.
Stored Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) via Unsanitized Topology Metadata in Apache Storm UI
Versions Affected: before 2.8.6
Description: The Storm UI visualization component interpolates topology metadata including component IDs, stream names, and grouping values directly into HTML via innerHTML in parseNode() and parseEdge() without sanitization at any layer. An authenticated user with topology submission rights could craft a topology containing malicious HTML/JavaScript in component identifiers (e.g., a bolt ID containing an onerror event handler). This payload flows through Nimbus → Thrift → the Visualization API → vis.js tooltip rendering, resulting in stored cross-site scripting.
In multi-tenant deployments where topology submission is available to less-trusted users but the UI is accessed by operators or administrators, this enables privilege escalation through script execution in an admin's browser session.
Mitigation: 2.x users should upgrade to 2.8.6. Users who cannot upgrade immediately should monkey-patch the parseNode() and parseEdge() functions in the visualization JavaScript file to HTML-escape all API-supplied values including nodeId, :capacity, :latency, :component, :stream, and :grouping before interpolation into tooltip HTML strings, and should additionally restrict topology submission to trusted users via Nimbus ACLs as a defense-in-depth measure. A guide on how to do this is available in the release notes of 2.8.6.
Credit: This issue was discovered while investigating another report by K.