CVE-2024-0213: Buffer Overflow Vulnerability in TA for Linux and MacOS Leading to System Compromise

Overview

A significant security vulnerability, identified as CVE-2024-0213, has been discovered impacting both Linux and MacOS systems running TA versions prior to 5.8.1. This vulnerability exposes systems to a potential buffer overflow attack, which can lead to unauthorized privilege escalation, denial of service (DoS), or even system compromise.
The issue arises from a memory corruption problem within the TA service, that operates with root privileges. This can be exploited by a local user and may cause the failure of event reporting to ePO, resulting from invalid input file processing. This vulnerability is highly critical due to the potential for system compromise and data leakage.

Vulnerability Summary

CVE ID: CVE-2024-0213
Severity: High (CVSS: 8.2)
Attack Vector: Local network
Privileges Required: User level
User Interaction: Required
Impact: Potential system compromise or data leakage

Affected Products

Product | Affected Versions

TA for Linux | Versions prior to 5.8.1
TA for MacOS | Versions prior to 5.8.1

How the Exploit Works

The exploit takes advantage of a buffer overflow vulnerability in the TA service. A local user, with valid access to the system, sends an excessively large input to the TA service, which is not properly validated. This causes a memory corruption issue due to the overflow of the buffer, leading to unexpected behavior in the TA service which operates with root privileges. The attacker can leverage this to gain escalated permissions or cause a DoS, and potentially disable event reporting to ePO.

Conceptual Example Code

Here’s a conceptual example of how the vulnerability might be exploited using a shell command:

$ echo "overly large input data" > /path/to/vulnerable/TA/service

In this example, the string “overly large input data” represents an input that exceeds the buffer capacity of the TA service, thus triggering the buffer overflow. The exact nature and size of the input would depend on the specific implementation of the TA service.