Atlassian patched a critical Confluence vulnerability
Vulnerabilities mentionedAll →
| CVE | Vulnerability | CVSS | EPSS | Flags | Affected | Exposure | Published |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CVE-2022-26138 | Hard-coded Credentials in Atlassian Questions for Confluence App The Questions for Confluence app for Confluence Server and Data Center, when versions 2.7.34, 2.7.35, or 3.0.2 are installed, creates a user account named disabledsystemuser in the confluence-users group protected by a hard-coded password (CWE-798). Because the credential is embedded in the app, any remote, unauthenticated attacker who knows the password can log in to Confluence without a valid account. Successful exploitation grants access to all content that is accessible to the confluence-users group, which typically spans most of the instance's spaces and pages. Only Confluence Server and Data Center deployments that installed one of those app versions are affected, and the created account persists after installation. The flaw is being actively exploited: it was added to CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2022-07-29 and carries a 98.2% EPSS score (100th percentile). Do: Upgrade the Questions for Confluence app to a fixed release per Atlassian's instructions, as required by the CISA KEV catalog. Check whether an account named disabledsystemuser exists in the confluence-users group; if present, delete it or change its hard-coded password, and review authentication logs for logins using that account. Prioritize internet-exposed Confluence Server and Data Center instances. | 9.8 | 98% | KEV |
| moderatelikely thousands of Confluence Server/Data Center instances (only those that installed the three named app versions) |
Full article391 words · extracted from securityaffairs.com · click to collapse
Atlassian released security updates to address a critical security vulnerability affecting Confluence Server and Confluence Data Center.
Atlassian released security updates to address a critical hardcoded credentials vulnerability in Confluence Server and Data Center tracked as CVE-2022-26138.
A remote, unauthenticated attacker can exploit the vulnerability to log into unpatched servers.
Once installed the Questions for Confluence app (versions 2.7.34, 2.7.35, and 3.0.2), a Confluence user account with the username “disabledsystemuser” is created.
According to Atlassian, the account allows administrators to migrate data from the app to Confluence Cloud. The bad news is that the account is created with a hard-coded password and is added to the confluence-users group, which allows viewing and editing all non-restricted pages within Confluence by default.
“When the Questions for Confluence app is enabled on Confluence Server or Data Center, it creates a Confluence user account with the username disabledsystemuser. This account is intended to aid administrators that are migrating data from the app to Confluence Cloud. The disabledsystemuser account is created with a hardcoded password and is added to the confluence-users group, which allows viewing and editing all non-restricted pages within Confluence by default.” reads the advisory published by Atlassian. “A remote, unauthenticated attacker with knowledge of the hardcoded password could exploit this to log into Confluence and access any pages the group has access to.”
The affected versions are:
| Questions for Confluence 2.7.x | 2.7.34 2.7.35 |
| Questions for Confluence 3.0.x | 3.0.2 |
The company pointed out that uninstalling the Questions for Confluence app does not solve this vulnerability because the disabledsystemuser account is not removed after the app has been uninstalled. Admins of impacted Confluence Server or Data Center instances can remediate this vulnerability with the following actions:
- Option 1: Update to a non-vulnerable version of Questions for Confluence
- Option 2: Disable or delete the disabledsystemuser account
The good news is that Atlassian is not aware of attacks in the wild exploiting this vulnerability.
To determine if someone has used the hardcoded password to log into the disabledsystemuser account, admins can get a list of users’ last logon times and if the last authentication time for the hardcoded account is null, that means the account was never used to access the device.
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Text extracted automatically; images, tables and formatting may be missing. Original: https://securityaffairs.com/133496/hacking/atlassian-confluence-server-data-center-flaw.html