| Summary | Possible remote code execution on intranet host system |
|---|---|
| Advisory Release Date |
|
| Product |
|
Affected Linchpin Enterprise News Versions | 2.14.1 and earlier |
| Fixed Linchpin Enterprise News Version | 2.14.2 |
| Affected Linchpin Events Versions | 3.3.2 and earlier |
| Fixed Linchpin Events Versions | 3.3.4 / 3.4.2 |
| Affected Linchpin Intranet Suite Versions | 3.4.4 / 3.3.5 / 3.2.4 and earlier |
| Fixed Linchpin Intranet Suite Versions | 3.4.5 / 3.3.6 / 3.3.7/ 3.2.5 |
Problem
We were able to identify a security vulnerability in our Linchpin Enterprise News app and Linchpin Events. The vulnerability allows any logged-in user under tight conditions to run any available software on the host system. This is a type of remote-code-execution attack. The risk of exploiting this bug decreases significantly if users cannot change their fullnames themselves.
The vulnerability has been rated as high (9.8) according to the scale published under the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
This issue was recently discovered by an external reviewer during our participation in the Atlassian Marketplace Bug Bounty Program. We have since fixed the affected functionalities and also analyzed our codebase for similar vulnerabilities.
All versions of the app Linchpin Enterprise News up to and including 2.14.1 are affected by this vulnerability.
All versions of the app Linchpin Events up to and including 3.3.2 are affected by this vulnerability.
All versions of the app Linchpin Intranet Suite are affected by this vulnerability, up to and including versions 3.2.4, 3.3.5 and 3.4.4.
Solution
Depending on the fact whether you use Linchpin Enterprise News or Linchpin Events apps standalone or bundled as part of the Linchpin Intranet Suite, there are different paths to get to the right version of the Linchpin Enterprise News that closes the gap mentioned.
Linchpin Enterprise News
If you are using the Linchpin Enterprise News app in one of the affected versions 2.14.1 or earlier, please immediately update to Linchpin Enterprise News 2.14.2.
Linchpin Events
If you are using the Linchpin Events app in one of the affected versions 3.3.2 or earlier, please immediately update to Linchpin Events 3.3.4 or 3.4.2.
Linchpin Intranet Suite
Please refer to the table below to determine the appropriate fix version.
Current version | Fix version |
|---|---|
Linchpin Intranet Suite 3.4.0 to 3.4.4 | 3.4.5 |
| Linchpin Intranet Suite 3.3.0 to 3.3.5 | 3.3.6 or 3.3.7 |
| Linchpin Intranet Suite 3.2.4 and earlier | 3.2.5 |
For versions prior to the 3.2 line, we recommend updating to the latest supported version of the Linchpin Intranet Suite available for your Confluence system.
Important: If you update from Linchpin Intranet Suite 2.0.0 or earlier versions, your system could be affected by a rare bug that causes the installation to hang.
Please follow the description in this article: Installation or update of Linchpin Intranet Suite hangs
- Restart Confluence (only necessary if the update is already hanging)
- Uninstall the app "Linchpin User Profiles (Content Responsibility)".
- Uninstall the app "Linchpin User Profiles".
- Install the app "Linchpin Intranet Suite" again.
Root Cause
While creating news posts or events users may enter code that is executed by the backend template engine (Apache Velocity) which is integrated in Confluence. With a working combination of different code snippets it is possible to use the Java Reflection API to run system processes on the server host.
If users are NOT able to change their own fullnames the risk for exploiting this vulnerability decreases significantly because the fullname is involved as data source.
We have fixed this by sanitizing user inputs in a way that the template engine does not execute entered code.