CVE-2024-9465 Scanner

Palo Alto Expedition is a widely used tool designed for network administrators and security professionals to manage and configure Palo Alto Networks' security features efficiently. It is primarily utilized to convert firewall configurations and optimize rulesets, ensuring robust network security. Companies across various sectors, including finance, healthcare, and government, rely on it to streamline their security operations and maintain compliance standards. By simplifying the migration and deployment of security policies, Expedition enables organizations to enhance their defenses against evolving cyber threats. Its user-friendly interface and comprehensive analytics aid IT teams in identifying potential vulnerabilities and optimizing network protection. Additionally, Expedition is a vital component in the continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) workflows, allowing seamless updates while maintaining high-security standards.

An SQL Injection vulnerability occurs when attackers can manipulate a SQL query by injecting malformed input through a web application's interface. If present in Palo Alto Expedition, this SQL Injection vulnerability allows malicious actors to traverse the database, reading sensitive information like usernames, password hashes, and device configurations. Unauthenticated attackers might exploit this flaw to escalate privileges or gain unauthorized access to the system. The impacted system's database could become entirely exposed, leading to potential data breaches and loss of confidentiality. This vulnerability is critical, indicating a high risk of attack with substantial potential impact, necessitating immediate mitigation efforts. Protecting against SQL Injection vulnerabilities requires rigorous validation of all database query inputs and other hardening measures.

The vulnerability in question is located at specific end-points within Expedition's configuration parser for Checkpoint. By exploiting flaws in user input handling, attackers can issue time-based SQL queries. The template specifically identifies the vulnerable endpoint as the "parsers/Checkpoint/CHECKPOINT.php" script, which processes HTTP POST requests. When the "action" and "project" parameters in the requests are manipulated, attackers can execute arbitrary SQL commands against the Expedition database. The conjunction of observing response times with intentionally constructed input strings can confirm successful exploitation, revealing sensitive data. The vulnerability takes advantage of unchecked parameters and responds positively when SQL injection techniques are applied to delay the processing of HTTP responses, indicating successful database interaction.

If successfully exploited, this vulnerability could have serious consequences, including unauthorized database access and data leakage. Attackers could extract sensitive data, such as administrator passwords and user credentials, compromising network security. Furthermore, the exposure of configuration details could enable further attacks, permitting unauthorized manipulation of security policies and potentially allowing external threats to bypass protective measures. There is also a risk of administrative privilege escalation, leading to unlawful control over the Expedition platform. Such breaches not only threaten operational continuity but also may impose severe financial and reputational damage to the affected organization. Mitigating this threat effectively requires urgent remedial actions and strengthening the security posture of the Expedition platform.

REFERENCES

• https://security.paloaltonetworks.com/PAN-SA-2024-0010
• https://github.com/horizon3ai/CVE-2024-9465/tree/main
• https://www.horizon3.ai/attack-research/palo-alto-expedition-from-n-day-to-full-compromise/
• https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2024-9465