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CITRIX ISSUES PATCHES FOR ZERO-DAY RECORDING MANAGER BUGSCITRIX ISSUES PATCHES
FOR ZERO-DAY RECORDING MANAGER BUGS

There is some disagreement over whether the remote code execution (RCE) security
flaws allow for unauthenticated exploitation or not. Citrix says no, but
researchers say the company is downplaying a "good old unauthenticated RCE."

Jai Vijayan, Contributing Writer

November 12, 2024

5 Min Read
Source: JHVEPhoto via Shutterstock


Very swiftly after disclosing them, Citrix has issued patches for two
vulnerabilities in its Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktop technology that allow a
remote attacker escalate privileges or execute code of their choice on
vulnerable systems.

Citrix has described the remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities as
something that only a previously authenticated attacker could abuse. However,
researchers at watchTowr who discovered the flaws and developed a
proof-of-concept exploit (PoC) say it's a point-and-click vulnerability that an
unauthenticated attacker can exploit with relative ease.

Citrix is tracking one of the flaws as CVE-2024-8068 and the other as
CVE-2024-8069. A few hours after Citrix and watchTowr made their announcements,
the ShadowServer Foundation announced it was seeing PoC-based exploitation
attempts.

"
While there is discussion on whether these are remotely exploitable without
auth, we urge you to update your installations NOW," it write in an email.


CITRIX DOWNPLAYING THREAT SEVERITY?

The flaws affect the thin-client technology's Session Recording Manager
component that allows admins to capture, store, and manage recordings of user
sessions. They stem from a weakness in how Session Recording Manager
deserializes or unpacks data that has been converted into a format that makes it
easy to store and transmit, according to the researchers at watchTowr who
discovered and reported the issues to Citrix in July.

Related:2 Zero-Day Bugs in Microsoft's Nov. Update Under Active Exploit

Citrix initially said it was unable to reproduce the issue but later
acknowledged the problem after the security vendor gave them a PoC exploit for
the vulnerability.

In an advisory issued Nov. 12, the company described CVE-2024-8068 as a
privilege escalation vulnerability that allows an authenticated user in the same
Windows Active Directory domain as the session recording server to
gain NetworkService Account access. CVE-2024-8069, according to Citrix, is a
"limited" RCE for attackers with admin-level account access on vulnerable
systems. "Cloud Software Group strongly urges affected customers of Citrix
Session Recording to install the relevant updated versions of Citrix Session
Recording as soon their upgrade schedule permits," the company cautioned.

___________________________________

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Understanding Cybercriminals and Nation-State Threat Actors," Nov. 14 at 11 a.m.
ET. Don't miss sessions on understanding MITRE ATT&CK, using proactive security
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like Larry Larsen from the Navy Credit Federal Union, former Kaspersky Lab
analyst Costin Raiu, Ben Read of Mandiant Intelligence, Rob Lee from SANS, and
Elvia Finalle from Omdia. Register now!

Related:Amazon Employee Data Compromised in MOVEit Breach

___________________________________

Even so, Citrix has assigned both vulnerabilities only medium severity scores of
5.1 of 10 on the CVSS vulnerability rating scale. It's an assignment that
watchTowr has disputed.

"Citrix is downplaying the severity of this vulnerability as a medium priority
when it’s really point-click-full-takeover," says Benjamin Harris, CEO of
watchTowr, pointing to the company's exploit code. The combination of the two
vulnerabilities allows for a "good old unauthenticated RCE," Harris tells Dark
Reading.

"Citrix's Virtual Apps and Desktop offering is a flagship Citrix solution,
targeted at [Fortune 500] organizations," he notes. "Since we're dealing with a
deserialization issue, a bug class that is known for being relatively stable, we
[have] a high degree of confidence that our exploit will work reliably. There's
no tricky heap manipulation or other entropy creeping in."

Many organizations use Citrix's Virtual Apps and Desktop technology to enable
users to access their applications and desktop environments from anywhere and
using any device. It gives organizations a way to centrally deploy, update, and
secure all user apps from a single location making maintenance more efficient,
consistent, and cost effective. Another benefit that Citrix advertises is
increased security from having applications and data on centralized servers
rather than on individual endpoint devices. The technology's Session Recording
feature — where watchTowr discovered the flaws — enables admins to monitor for
anomalous behavior and to maintain a detailed record of user activity for future
audit and troubleshooting purposes.

Related:'GoIssue' Cybercrime Tool Targets GitHub Developers En Masse

Demand for such technologies has increased in recent years as more companies
have embraced remote and hybrid work models. Research firm MarketsandMarkets
estimates the market will reach $1.7 billion in 2028 from around $1.5 billion
last year. The broader desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) market itself is expected to
hit nearly $19 billion by 2030 from just over $4 billion in 2021.


DEPENDENCE ON KNOWN INSECURE TECHNOLOGY

The researchers at watchTowr discovered the vulnerabilities while scrutinizing
Citrix's Virtual Apps and Desktop's architecture for potential security issues.
The security vendor's examination showed that Citrix's app uses Microsoft's
Message Queuing (MSMQ) service to receive recorded user session files and to
store them in a separate storage manager component. In addition, watchTowr found
Citrix using a Microsoft technology called BinaryFormatter to deserialize data
in the storage manager component when needed. BinaryFormatter is technology that
Microsoft itself has urged organizations to stop using as soon as possible
because of security weaknesses that are no longer fixable, watchTowr said.

The vulnerabilities that watchTowr discovered involved a combination of an
Internet-accessible MSMQ instance in the session recording component of Citrix's
Virtual Apps and Desktop technology along with misconfigured permissions related
to BinaryFormatter. "This isn't really a bug in the BinaryFormatter itself, nor
a bug in MSMQ, but rather the unfortunate consequence of Citrix relying on the
documented-to-be-insecure BinaryFormatter to maintain a security boundary,"
Harris says. "It's a 'bug' that manifested during the design phase, when Citrix
decided which serialization library to use."

Harris says watchTowr reported the vulnerability as a single issue, whereas
Citrix appears to have treated it as two separate issues.  

"While it is inarguable that Citrix's use of a BinaryFormatter with untrusted
data is a de facto bug," Harris says, "we don't have enough context to determine
if exposing the MSMQ queue via HTTP is really a bug, caused by a careless
oversight, or a carefully calculated effect of some obscure business
requirement."

Citrix's technologies are a frequent target for attackers because of the high
level of access the company's technology provides to enterprise applications and
data. Many of the reported security flaws recently have affected the company's
NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway remote access platforms.






ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jai Vijayan, Contributing Writer



Jai Vijayan is a seasoned technology reporter with over 20 years of experience
in IT trade journalism. He was most recently a Senior Editor at Computerworld,
where he covered information security and data privacy issues for the
publication. Over the course of his 20-year career at Computerworld, Jai also
covered a variety of other technology topics, including big data, Hadoop,
Internet of Things, e-voting, and data analytics. Prior to Computerworld, Jai
covered technology issues for The Economic Times in Bangalore, India. Jai has a
Master's degree in Statistics and lives in Naperville, Ill.

See more from Jai Vijayan, Contributing Writer
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