This cloud security platform is finding zero-days by itself

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Oxeye’s cloud security platform discovered a high-severity zero-day vulnerability in a secrets management system completely autonomously - with no manual input or intervention. 

According to the company, its cloud-native application security platform found a zero-day in HashiCorp Vault Project, a popular identity-based secrets and encryption management system used to control access to API encryption keys, passwords, and certificates. 

The flaw was an SQL injection vulnerability that could have allowed threat actors remote code execution (RCE) capabilities. It is now tracked as CVE-2023-0620. The flaw has since been addressed and a patch has been released. 

Patches released

Oxeye said its Application Security Platform identified the zero-day as part of a standard deployment scan, and concluded that threat actors could have used it to access sensitive data, play with it, and even run malicious apps on the target endpoints

“Given the trend toward microservices in modern software development, configuration-based attacks like this are a significant threat and are expected to become more common. 

"Because the centralized nature of configurations makes them a single point of truth, they are a lucrative target for threat actors. As such, organizations should prioritize the security of configuration files and other centralized components in modern applications,” the researchers conclude.

After disclosing the flaw to HashiCorp, the company released patches 1.13.1, 1.12.5, and 1.11.9.

"The importance of restricting access to critical tools and implementing adequate input validation to prevent SQL injection attacks is highlighted by this vulnerability in HashiCorp's Vault project,” said Ron Vider, CTO and Co-Founder for Oxeye. “To safeguard your environment, swiftly applying patches and ensuring security policies are current will ensure successful attacks are avoided."

Sead is a seasoned freelance journalist based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He writes about IT (cloud, IoT, 5G, VPN) and cybersecurity (ransomware, data breaches, laws and regulations). In his career, spanning more than a decade, he’s written for numerous media outlets, including Al Jazeera Balkans. He’s also held several modules on content writing for Represent Communications.