Ivanti Zero-Day Vulnerability – CVE-2023-38035

THE THREAT

On August 21st, 2023, Ivanti disclosed a new vulnerability impacting Ivanti Sentry (formerly MobileIron Sentry). Ivanti has confirmed limited exploitation occurred prior to the disclosure and release of security updates.

The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-38035 (CVSS: 9.8), is an API Authentication Bypass on Sentry Administrator Interface vulnerability. A remote and unauthenticated threat actor may exploit CVE-2023-38035 to access sensitive APIs used to configure the Ivanti Sentry administrator portal, allowing for configuration changes, command execution, and writing files to the system.

As exploitation has been confirmed, it is critical that organizations, using Ivanti Sentry, apply the relevant updates immediately. The eSentire Threat Intelligence team is actively tracking this topic for details on real-world attacks and detection opportunities.

What we’re doing about it

• eSentire Managed Vulnerability Service (MVS) will add the relevant plugins as they become available
• The eSentire Threat Intelligence team is actively tracking this topic for additional details and detection opportunities

What you should do about it

• Ivanti has released version specific RedHat Package Manager (RPM) scripts for all supported Ivanti Sentry versions
  • After performing a business impact review, organizations are recommended to run the relevant RPM script to remediate the vulnerability
  • Note, the correct version of the RPM script must be applied; failure to run the correct script may lead to system instability
  • Additional support may be found in the Ivanti Success Portal
• Restrict access to Port 8443 (MICS) to internal management networks only

Additional information

Ivanti Sentry is a gateway product that manages and encrypts traffic between organizations’ mobile devices and back-end systems. CVE-2023-38035 was initially discovered and reported to Ivanti by Mnemonic researchers. Details on real-world attacks, involving the vulnerability, have not been publicly shared at the time of writing, but Ivanti has confirmed that “a limited number of customers” have already been impacted.

Restricting access to Port 8443 (MICS), to internal management networks only, significantly reduces the likelihood of exploitation. Threat actors may still exploit the vulnerability but would require access to the system.

This is the third critical, actively exploited Ivanti vulnerability disclosed this year. On July 24th, Ivanti announced a vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-35078 (CVSS: 10), that allows unauthenticated API access to Ivanti Endpoint Manager Mobile (EPMM). Four days later, Ivanti disclosed CVE-2023-35081 (CVSS: 7.2), a path traversal vulnerability in Ivanti EPMM.

In cases where Port 8443 is not exposed to the Internet, threat actors may exploit CVE-2023-35078 and CVE-2023-35081 to enable exploitation of the new vulnerability, CVE-2023-38035. As exploitation of all three Ivanti vulnerabilities have been confirmed, it is critical that security patches to address all of these issues are deployed.

References:

[1] https://forums.ivanti.com/s/article/CVE-2023-38035-API-Authentication-Bypass-on-Sentry-Administrator-Interface?language=en_US
[2] https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-38035
[3] https://forums.ivanti.com/s/article/KB-API-Authentication-Bypass-on-Sentry-Administrator-Interface-CVE-2023-38035?language=en_US
[4] https://success.ivanti.com/Community_RegStep1_Page?inst=Do
[5] https://www.mnemonic.io/resources/blog/threat-advisory-remote-code-execution-vulnerability-in-ivanti-sentry/
[6] https://forums.ivanti.com/s/article/CVE-2023-35078-Remote-unauthenticated-API-access-vulnerability?language=en_US
[7] https://forums.ivanti.com/s/article/CVE-2023-35081-Arbitrary-File-Write?language=en_US