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Trustwave Analysis of the April 2014 Oracle CPU for Databases

Written by Alex Kaluski | Apr 17, 2014 11:48:00 AM

The 17th of April fell this week, which means it is Oracle Critical Patch Update (CPU) time. The April 2014 CPU contains 104 fixes across Oracle's Database, Fusion Middleware, E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Siebel, iLearning, Oracle and Sun Systems Product Suite, MySQL, Oracle Linux and Virtualization and Oracle Java.

Read on for more information about what's included in this month's update.

Eighty-four of the fixes in this Critical Patch Update are for vulnerabilities that are remotely exploitable without authentication. In other words, anybody on the network can exploit these vulnerabilities. Seven products have fixes for vulnerabilities that allow for a complete takeover of the host: Oracle Database, Oracle Fusion, Hyperion, Supply Chain, Java, Virtualization and MySQL.

This update also includes two Oracle Database fixes. Both issues require authentication with advanced privileges. Fixes are available for all supported versions of Oracle Database, 11gR1, 11gR2 and 12c.

For MySQL customers, there are 14 MySQL fixes, three of them remotely exploitable without authentication and two (CVE-2014-2444 and CVE-2014-2436) that allow for the complete compromise of the host server by an authenticated network user.

Oracle Database Server Vulnerabilities:

  • CVE-2014-2406: This vulnerability is in the Core RDBMS component. This difficult-to- exploit vulnerability allows an authenticated database user with advanced privileges complete takeover of the host, including arbitrary code execution. Patches are available for 11.1.0.7, 11.2.0.3, 11.2.0.4 and 12.1.0.1. The CVSS Base Score is 8.5.
  • CVE-2014-2408: This vulnerability is in the Core RDBMS component. This difficult-to-exploit vulnerability allows an authenticated database user with advanced privileges read and write access to any arbitrary Operating System location. Patches are available for 11.1.0.7, 11.2.0.3, 11.2.0.4 and 12.1.0.1. The CVSS Base Score is 6.6.

Most severe MySQL Vulnerabilities:

  • CVE-2014-2444: This vulnerability is in the MySQL Server component. It allows an authenticated user to fully takeover the database server and possibly execute arbitrary code. Affected versions are 5.6.15 and earlier. The CVSS Base Score is 6.5.
  • CVE-2014-2436: This vulnerability is in the MySQL Server component. This difficult-to- exploit vulnerability allows an authenticated user to fully takeover the database server and possibly execute arbitrary code. Affected versions are 5.5.36 and earlier and 5.6.15 and earlier. The CVSS Base Score is 6.0
  • CVE-2014-2440: This vulnerability is interesting because it is in the MySQL Client component, thus requring updates to ALL client installations. This difficult-to-exploit vulnerability allows an authenticated network user to perform unauthorized read, update, insert or delete operations on some MySQL Client-accesible data. Patches are available for 5.5.36 and earlier and 5.6.15 and earlier. The CVSS Base Score is 5.1.

We also highly recommend reading Oracle's verbose descriptions of the Vulnerabilities.

Trustwave's AppDetective Pro and DbProtect products will include checks to verify the installation of relevant Oracle Database and MySQL patches with the next update to the knowledgebase (KB 4.36) scheduled for a mid-May 2014.