An important security issue affects a range of versions of Openfire, the cross-platform real-time collaboration server based on the XMPP protocol that is created by the Ignite Realtime community.

Impact Openfire's administrative console (the Admin Console), a web-based application, was found to be vulnerable to a path traversal attack via the setup environment. This permitted an unauthenticated user to use the unauthenticated Openfire Setup Environment in an already configured Openfire environment to access restricted pages in the Openfire Admin Console reserved for administrative users.

Cause Path traversal protections were already in place to protect against exactly this kind of attack, but didn’t defend against certain non-standard URL encoding for UTF-16 characters, that were not supported by the embedded webserver that was in use at the time.

A later upgrade of the embedded webserver included support for non-standard URL encoding of UTF-16 characters. The path traversal protections in place in Openfire were not updated to include protection against this new encoding.

Openfire's API defines a mechanism for certain URLs to be excluded from web authentication (this, for example, is used for the login page). This mechanism allows for wildcards to be used, to allow for flexible URL pattern matching.

The combination of the wildcard pattern matching and path traversal vulnerability allows a malicious user to bypass authentication requirements for Admin Console pages.

Affected versions This vulnerability affects all versions of Openfire that have been released since April 2015, starting with version 3.10.0. The problem has been patched in Openfire release 4.7.5 and 4.6.8, and further improvements will be included in the yet-to-be released first version on the 4.8 branch (which is expected to be version 4.8.0).

Problem Reproduction To test if an instance of Openfire is affected, follow these steps. Open a browser in incognito mode, or otherwise ensure that there is no authenticated session with the Openfire admin console. Open the following URL (possibly modified for the hostname of the server that is running Openfire):

http://localhost:9090/setup/setup-s/%u002e%u002e/%u002e%u002e/log.jsp

If this shows part of the openfire logfiles, then the instance of Openfire is affected by this vulnerability. Note that different versions of Openfire will show a different layout. Newer versions of Openfire can be expected to show log files on a dark background, while older versions will show a largely white page. (Depending on the content of the log file, this page might be empty, apart from a header!)

If there's a redirect to the login page, the instance is likely unaffected.

Problem Resolution The problem has been patched in Openfire release 4.7.5 and 4.6.8, and further improvements will be included in the yet-to-be released first version on the 4.8 branch (which is expected to be version 4.8.0).

- In Openfire 4.6.8, 4.7.5 and 4.8.0, Path Traversal pattern detection has been improved to include detection of non-standard URL encodings, preventing any non UTF-8 characters. - In Openfire 4.6.8, 4.7.5 and 4.8.0, a new configuration property (adminConsole.access.allow-wildcards-in-excludes) is introduced that controls the permissibility of using wildcards in URL-patterns that define exclusions to authentication. - In Openfire 4.6.8, 4.7.5 and 4.8.0, the existing value that uses a wildcard in URL-patterns that define exclusions to authentication has been replaced by values that do not depend on a wildcard. - In Openfire 4.6.8, 4.7.5 and 4.8.0, Setup-specific URL-patterns that define exclusions to authentication are no longer active after the setup process has finished. - In Openfire 4.8.0, the embedded webserver will be updated to a version that no longer supports the non-standard URL encoding of UTF-16 characters. - In Openfire 4.8.0, the embedded webserver that serves the Openfire administrative console will bind to the loopback network interface by default.

Be aware that the new configuration properties can interfere with the functionality of certain Openfire plugins. This is especially true for plugins that bind a (web)endpoint to the embedded webserver that serves the Openfire administrative console, like current versions of the REST API plugin do. For these plugins to remain functional and/or reachable, it might be required to toggle the property adminConsole.access.allow-wildcards-in-excludes to true, and to avoid binding the embedded webserver to the loopback network interface only.

When your server uses older versions of the following plugins, make sure to upgrade them:

- Random Avatar plugin, update to version 1.1.0 or later. - Monitoring Service plugin, update to version 2.5.0 or later. - HTTP File Upload plugin, update to version 1.3.0 or later.

Mitigation If an Openfire upgrade isn’t available for your release, or isn’t quickly actionable, you can take any of the following steps to mitigate the risk for your Openfire environment.

Be aware: through Openfire plugins, the effectiveness of some mitigations listed below can be reduced, while other mitigations might affect the functionality of plugins. Particular care should be taken when using the Monitoring Service plugin, REST API plugin, User Service plugin and/or Random Avatar plugin.

Restrict network access Use network security measures (network ACLs and/or firewalls, VPNs) to ensure only trusted members of your community have access to the Openfire Admin Console. As a general rule, never expose the Openfire Admin Console to the general internet.

Examples: On a linux machine running ufw, deny ports 9090 and 9091 on non-loopback interfaces On a Windows machine, restrict the rules that open ports 9090 and 9091 to only allow traffic from the IPv4 and/or IPv6 loopback addresses On AWS cloud infrastructure, use EC2 Security Groups to restrict ports 9090 and 9091 to trusted IP addresses. If the trusted range is necessarily too broad, consider opening and closing the ports only as necessary If using Docker, instead of docker run ... -p 5222:5222 -p 9090:9090 -p 9091:9091 openfire prevent remote access to the Admin Console with docker run ... -p 5222:5222 -p 127.0.0.1:9090:9090 -p 127.0.0.1:9091:9091 openfire

Modify runtime configuration file To close the avenue of potential attack, a runtime configuration file of Openfire can be modified.

In Openfire's installation directory, find the file plugins/admin/webapp/WEB-INF/web.xml. After creating a backup of this file, edit the original file.

The content of this file is XML. Find a <filter> element, that contains the <filter-name>AuthCheck</filter-name> child element. Depending on your version of Openfire, it will look similar to this:

xml <filter> <filter-name>AuthCheck</filter-name> <filter-class>org.jivesoftware.admin.AuthCheckFilter</filter-class> <init-param> <param-name>excludes</param-name> <param-value> login.jsp,index.jsp?logout=true,setup/index.jsp,setup/setup-,.gif,.png,error-serverdown.jsp,loginToken.jsp </param-value> </init-param> </filter> The value inside of the param-value element is a comma-separated list of values. From this list, remove all (asterisk) characters.

Save the file, and restart Openfire for the change to take effect.

Note that no guarantees can be given that this runtime configuration change persists over time. Ensure to monitor the presence of the fix. It is recommended to upgrade to a safe version of Openfire as soon as possible.

A side-effect of this change is that the Openfire web-based setup wizard will not function properly (functionality can be restored by reverting the change). This wizard is typically used only when initially installing Openfire.

Bind admin console to loopback interface The Openfire admin console is a web-based application. By default, the corresponding webserver (that is embedded in Openfire) binds to all network interfaces of the host that it is running on.

The admin console can be configured to bind to a specific network interface. This will prevent it from being accessed through other network interfaces. By configuring the admin console to bind to the local loopback interface, it is accessible only to users on the server itself. This reduces the avenue of attack.

Note that several Openfire plugins expose part or all of their functionality through the admin console webserver. The REST API plugin, for example, serves its endpoints via this webserver. Availability of this functionality will be affected by binding the webserver to a specific network interface.

To bind the webserver of the Openfire admin console to a specific network interface, the 'openfire.xml' configuration file can be used.

In Openfire's installation directory, locate the file conf/openfire.xml. After creating a backup of this file, edit the original file.

The content of this file is XML. Find the <adminConsole> element that is a direct child element of the root <jive> element. Add a new element, named <interface> as a child element of <adminConsole>. The value of the <interface> element should be the name of the loopback interface or interface address. Setting value to 127.0.0.1 works on all tested environments (using values like lo on most Linux systems or lo0 on macOS will have the same effect).

The resulting fragment of the openfire.xml file will look similar to this:

xml <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <jive> <adminConsole> <interface>127.0.0.1</interface> <port>9090</port> <securePort>9091</securePort> </adminConsole>

...

Save the file, and restart Openfire for the change to take effect.

Use AuthFilterSanitizer plugin

The Ignite Realtime community has made available a new plugin, called the AuthFilterSanitizer plugin. The plugin can be installed from the Openfire admin console, or can be downloaded from the plugin's archive page on the IgniteRealtime.org community website.

This plugin periodically removes entries for Openfire's authentication filter that are susceptible to abuse, closing the avenue of potential attack.

Note that this plugin might interfere with functionality that depends on the abuse-susceptible entries in the authentication filter that might be provided by plugins.

Credit

This issue was originally reported by Siebene@ who has our gratitude for the responsible and detailed disclosure of the issue!

We are grateful for the resources made available by Surevine ltd. They were instrumental in addressing the issue listed in this advisory.

References - Ignite Realtime community site - Openfire releases download page - Openfire AuthFilter Sanitizer plugin releases download page - Openfire HTTP File Upload plugin releases download page - Openfire Monitoring Service plugin releases download page - Openfire Random Avatar plugin releases download page - OWASP: Path Traversal - Wikipedia: URL encoding, section 'Non-standard implementations' - Issue OF-2595 in Openfire's issue tracker - Jetty CVE-2021-34429

nio/XMLLightweightParser.java in Ignite Realtime Openfire before 3.9.2 does not properly restrict the processing of compressed XML elements, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (resource consumption) via a crafted XMPP stream, aka an "xmppbomb" attack.

Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures assigned an identifier CVE-2014-0364 to the following vulnerability:

Name: CVE-2014-0364 URL: http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2014-0364 Assigned: 20131205 Reference: http://community.igniterealtime.org/blogs/ignite/2014/04/17/asmack-400-rc1-has-been-released Reference: CERT-VN:VU#489228 Reference: http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/489228

The ParseRoster component in the Ignite Realtime Smack XMPP API before 4.0.0-rc1 does not verify the from attribute of a roster-query IQ stanza, which allows remote attackers to spoof IQ responses via a crafted attribute.

It is not clear whether this flaw affects the version of smack in Fedora. Both of these look to be needed to complete the fix:

http://issues.igniterealtime.org/browse/SMACK-533 http://issues.igniterealtime.org/browse/SMACK-538

Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures assigned an identifier CVE-2014-0363 to the following vulnerability:

Name: CVE-2014-0363 URL: http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2014-0363 Assigned: 20131205 Reference: http://community.igniterealtime.org/blogs/ignite/2014/04/17/asmack-400-rc1-has-been-released Reference: http://issues.igniterealtime.org/browse/SMACK-410 Reference: CERT-VN:VU#489228 Reference: http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/489228

The ServerTrustManager component in the Ignite Realtime Smack XMPP API before 4.0.0-rc1 does not verify basicConstraints and nameConstraints in X.509 certificate chains from SSL servers, which allows man-in-the-middle attackers to spoof servers and obtain sensitive information via a crafted certificate chain.

The man-in-the-middle attacker requires a certificate that is valid for any domain name.

Upstream patch: http://fisheye.igniterealtime.org/changelog/smackgit?cs=93030c218c62cf0a0a8ea48746db1452fa34033c

From code inspection, this issue affects the 3.2.2 version in Fedora (the CERT advisory mentions version 3.4.1 and possibly earlier versions).

Directory traversal vulnerability in log.jsp in Ignite Realtime Openfire 3.6.2 allows remote attackers to read arbitrary files via a ..\ (dot dot backslash) in the log parameter.

Cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in login.jsp in the Admin Console in Openfire 3.6.0a and earlier allows remote attackers to inject arbitrary web script or HTML via the url parameter.

SQL injection vulnerability in CallLogDAO in SIP Plugin in Openfire 3.6.0a and earlier allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary SQL commands via the type parameter to sipark-log-summary.jsp.

Open redirect vulnerability in login.jsp in Openfire 3.6.0a and earlier allows remote attackers to redirect users to arbitrary web sites and conduct phishing attacks via the url parameter.

Directory traversal vulnerability in the AuthCheck filter in the Admin Console in Openfire 3.6.0a and earlier allows remote attackers to bypass authentication and access the admin interface via a .. (dot dot) in a URI that matches the Exclude-Strings list, as demonstrated by a /setup/setup-/.. sequence in a URI.

An issue in Ignite Realtime Openfire before 4.8.1 allows a remote attacker to escalate privileges via the admin.authorizedJIDs system property component.

An issue in Ignite Realtime Openfire v.4.8.0 and before allows a remote attacker to escalate privileges via the ROOMCACHE component.

Race condition in the XMPP library in Smack before 4.1.9, when the SecurityMode.required TLS setting has been set, allows man-in-the-middle attackers to bypass TLS protections and trigger use of cleartext for client authentication by stripping the "starttls" feature from a server response.

An issue was discovered in Pascom Cloud Phone System before 7.20.x. A configuration error between NGINX and a backend Tomcat server leads to a path traversal in the Tomcat server, exposing unintended endpoints.

The jabber:iq:auth implementation in IQAuthHandler.java in Ignite Realtime Openfire before 3.6.4 allows remote authenticated users to change the passwords of arbitrary accounts via a modified username element in a passwdchange action.

Ignite Realtime Openfire before 3.6.5 does not properly implement the register.password (aka canChangePassword) console configuration setting, which allows remote authenticated users to bypass intended policy and change their own passwords via a passwdchange IQ packet.

It was reported [1] that Smack (XMPP client library) is vulnerable to MitM attacks with a crafted SSL certificates. Quote from [1]: ... Details -------

Smack is using Java's SSLSocket, which checks the peer certificate using an X509TrustManager, but does not perform hostname verification. Therefore, it is possible to redirect the traffic between a Smack-using application and a legitimate XMPP server through the attacker's server, merely by providing a valid certificate for a domain under the attacker's control.

In Smack versions 2.2.0 to 3.4.1, a custom ServerTrustManager implementation was used, which was supplied with the connection's server name, and performed hostname verification. However, it failed to verify the basicConstraints and nameConstraints of the certificate chain (CVE-2014-0363, http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2014-0363) and has been removed in Smack 4.0.0.

Applications using Smack 2.2.0 to 3.4.1 with a custom TrustManager did not benefit from ServerTrustManager and are vulnerable as well, unless their own TrustManager implementation explicitly performs hostname verification. ...

[1]: http://seclists.org/bugtraq/2014/Aug/29

OpenFire XMPP Server before 3.10 accepts self-signed certificates, which allows remote attackers to perform unspecified spoofing attacks.

Ignite Realtime Openfire 3.10.2 allows remote authenticated users to gain administrator access via the isadmin parameter to user-edit-form.jsp.

Multiple cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities in Ignite Realtime Openfire 3.10.2 allow remote attackers to inject arbitrary web script or HTML via the (1) groupchatName parameter to plugins/clientcontrol/create-bookmark.jsp; the (2) urlName parameter to plugins/clientcontrol/create-bookmark.jsp; the (3) hostname parameter to server-session-details.jsp; or the (4) search parameter to group-summary.jsp.

Multiple cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerabilities in Ignite Realtime Openfire 3.10.2 allow remote attackers to hijack the authentication of administrators for requests that (1) change a password via a crafted request to user-password.jsp, (2) add users via a crafted request to user-create.jsp, (3) edit server settings or (4) disable SSL on the server via a crafted request to server-props.jsp, or (5) add clients via a crafted request to plugins/clientcontrol/permitted-clients.jsp.

The Admin Console in Ignite Realtime Openfire Server before 4.1.7 allows arbitrary client-side JavaScript code execution on victims who click a crafted setup/setup-host-settings.jsp?domain= link, aka XSS. Session ID and data theft may follow as well as the possibility of bypassing CSRF protections, injection of iframes to establish communication channels, etc. The vulnerability is present after login into the application.

An exploitable XML entity injection vulnerability exists in OpenFire User Import Export Plugin 2.6.0. A specially crafted web request can cause the retrieval of arbitrary files or denial of service. An authenticated attacker can send a crafted web request to trigger this vulnerability.

Ignite Realtime Openfire before 3.9.2 is vulnerable to cross-site scripting, caused by improper validation of user-supplied input. A remote attacker could exploit this vulnerability via a crafted URL to execute script in a victim's Web browser within the security context of the hosting Web site, once the URL is clicked. An attacker could use this vulnerability to steal the victim's cookie-based authentication credentials.

Ignite Realtime Openfire 4.4.1 allows XSS via the setup/setup-datasource-standard.jsp driver parameter.

Ignite Realtime Openfire 4.4.1 allows XSS via the setup/setup-datasource-standard.jsp serverURL parameter.

Ignite Realtime Openfire 4.4.1 allows XSS via the setup/setup-datasource-standard.jsp username parameter.

Ignite Realtime Openfire 4.4.1 allows XSS via the setup/setup-datasource-standard.jsp password parameter.

An XSS issue was discovered in Ignite Realtime Openfire 4.4.4 via cacheName to SystemCacheDetails.jsp.

An XSS issue was discovered in Ignite Realtime Openfire 4.4.4 via alias to Manage Store Contents.

An XSS issue was discovered in Ignite Realtime Openfire 4.4.4 via search to the Users/Group search page.