CVE-2024-43803

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Last Modified: UTC

Description

A flaw was found in the Bare Metal Operator (BMO). The BMO implements a Kubernetes API for managing bare metal hosts in Metal3. The BareMetalHost (BMH) CRD allows the userData, metaData, and networkData for the provisioned host to be specified as links to Kubernetes Secrets. There are fields for the Name and Namespace of the Secret, meaning that the baremetal-operator will read a Secret from any namespace. This flaw allows a user with access to create or edit a BareMetalHost can exfiltrate a Secret from another namespace by using it as the userData for provisioning some host, for example. Note that this need not be a real host; it could be a random VM.

Statement

This issue is considered moderate rather than important because it requires specific conditions to be exploited. The vulnerability relies on an attacker already having the ability to create or modify a BareMetalHost resource, which typically requires elevated permissions. Furthermore, the flaw only allows exfiltration of Secrets by referencing them in another namespace, but does not directly expose or escalate privileges across the cluster. It also doesn't impact the integrity or availability of the system but is limited to confidentiality concerns within a specific scope. Proper RBAC policies can mitigate this risk, reducing its overall severity.

Mitigation

The Operator can configure BMO RBAC to be the namespace scoped for Secrets, instead of the cluster scoped to prevent BMO from accessing Secrets from other namespaces.

Affected Packages and Issued Red Hat Security Errata

Products / Services Components State Errata
Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 openshift4/ose-image-customization-controller-rhel8 Not affected
Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.16 openshift4/ose-baremetal-rhel9-operator Fixed RHSA-2024:6824
Unless explicitly stated as not affected, all previous versions of packages in any minor update stream of a product listed here should be assumed vulnerable, although may not have been subject to full analysis.

Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details

Important note

CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authorities (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications ).

CVSS v3 Score Breakdown Red Hat NVD
CVSS v3 Base Score 4.9
Attack Vector Network
Attack Complexity Low
Privileges Required High
User Interaction None
Scope Unchanged
Confidentiality Impact High
Integrity Impact None
Availability Impact None

CVSS v3 Vector

Red Hat CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is Red Hat's CVSS v3 score or Impact different from other vendors?

For open source software shipped by multiple vendors, the CVSS base scores may vary for each vendor's version depending on the version they ship, how they ship it, the platform, and even how the software is compiled. This makes scoring of vulnerabilities difficult for third-party vulnerability databases such as NVD that only provide a single CVSS base score for each vulnerability. Red Hat scores reflect how a vulnerability affects our products specifically.

For more information, see https://access.redhat.com/solutions/762393.

My product is listed as "Under investigation" or "Affected", when will Red Hat release a fix for this vulnerability?

  • "Under investigation" doesn't necessarily mean that the product is affected by this vulnerability. It only means that our Analysis Team is still working on determining whether the product is affected and how it is affected.
  • "Affected" means that our Analysis Team has determined that this product is affected by this vulnerability and might release a fix to address this in the near future.

What can I do if my product is listed as "Will not fix"?

A "will not fix" status means that a fix for an affected product version is not planned or not possible due to complexity, which may create additional risk.

Available options depend mostly on the Impact of the vulnerability and the current Life Cycle phase of your product. Overall, you have the following options:
  • Upgrade to a supported product version that includes a fix for this vulnerability (recommended).
  • Apply a mitigation (if one exists).
  • Open a This content is not included.support case to request a prioritization of releasing a fix for this vulnerability.

What can I do if my product is listed as "Fix deferred"?

A deferred status means that a fix for an affected product version is not guaranteed due to higher-priority development work.

Available options depend mostly on the Impact of the vulnerability and the current Life Cycle phase of your product. Overall, you have the following options:
  • Apply a mitigation (if one exists).
  • Open a This content is not included.support case to request a prioritization of releasing a fix for this vulnerability.
  • Red Hat Engineering focuses on addressing high-priority issues based on their complexity or limited lifecycle support. Therefore, lower-priority issues will not receive immediate fixes.

What is a mitigation?

A mitigation is an action that can be taken to reduce the impact of a security vulnerability, without deploying any fixes.

I have a Red Hat product but it is not in the above list, is it affected?

The listed products were found to include one or more of the components that this vulnerability affects. These products underwent a thorough evaluation to determine their affectedness by this vulnerability. Note that layered products (such as container-based offerings) that consume affected components from any of the products listed in this table may be affected and are not represented.

Why is my security scanner reporting my product as vulnerable to this vulnerability even though my product version is fixed or not affected?

In order to maintain code stability and compatibility, Red Hat usually does not rebase packages to entirely new versions. Instead, we backport fixes and new features to an older version of the package we distribute. This can result in some security scanners that only consider the package version to report the package as vulnerable. To avoid this, we suggest that you use an approved vulnerability scanner from our This content is not included.Red Hat Vulnerability Scanner Certification program.