Important: JBoss Web Services security update

Related Vulnerabilities: CVE-2011-1096   CVE-2011-1096  

Synopsis

Important: JBoss Web Services security update

Type/Severity

Security Advisory: Important

Topic

An update for the JBoss Web Services component in JBoss Enterprise SOA
Platform 4.3 CP05 and JBoss Enterprise Portal Platform 4.3 CP07 which fixes
one security issue is now available from the Red Hat Customer Portal.

The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having
important security impact. A Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS)
base score, which gives a detailed severity rating, is available from the
CVE link in the References section.

Description

JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform is the next-generation ESB and business
process automation infrastructure. JBoss Enterprise Portal Platform is the
open source implementation of the Java EE suite of services and Portal
services running atop JBoss Enterprise Application Platform.

An attack technique was found against the W3C XML Encryption Standard when
block ciphers were used in cipher-block chaining (CBC) mode. A remote
attacker could use this flaw to conduct chosen-ciphertext attacks, leading
to the recovery of the entire plain text of a particular cryptogram by
examining the differences between SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)
responses sent from JBoss Web Services. (CVE-2011-1096)

Red Hat would like to thank Juraj Somorovsky of Ruhr-University Bochum for
reporting this issue.

Note: Manual action is required to apply this update. The CVE-2011-1096
issue is an attack on the WS-Security standard itself. Using new
Galois/Counter Mode (GCM) based algorithms for WS-Security encryption is
the W3C suggested way of dealing with this issue. To use GCM algorithms in
your application, update the encrypt element of all jboss-ws-security
configuration to specify a GCM algorithm. The following is an example
directive:

encrypt type="x509v3" algorithm="aes-128-gcm" alias="wsse"

Warning: Before applying this update, back up your JBoss installation,
including any databases, database settings, applications, configuration
files, and so on.

All users of JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform 4.3 CP05 and JBoss Enterprise
Portal Platform 4.3 CP07 as provided from the Red Hat Customer Portal are
advised to apply this update.

Solution

The References section of this erratum contains download links (you must
log in to download the update). Before applying this update, back up your
JBoss installation, including any databases, database settings,
applications, configuration files, and so on.

For both JBoss Enterprise Portal Platform and JBoss Enterprise SOA
Platform, it is recommended to halt the server by stopping the JBoss
Application Server process before installing this update, and then after
installing the update, restart the server by starting the JBoss Application
Server process.

Affected Products

  • Red Hat JBoss Middleware Text-Only Advisories for RHEL 6 x86_64

Fixes

  • BZ - 681916 - CVE-2011-1096 jbossws: Prone to character encoding pattern attack (XML Encryption flaw)

CVEs

References