SEC Consult Vulnerability Lab Security Advisory < 20181001-0 >
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              title: Password disclosure vulnerability & XSS
            product: PTC ThingWorx
 vulnerable version: 6.5-7.4, 8.0.x, 8.1.x, 8.2.x
      fixed version: see Solution section
         CVE number: CVE-2018-17216, CVE-2018-17217, CVE-2018-17218
             impact: critical
           homepage: https://www.ptc.com
              found: 2018-03-13
                 by: M. Tomaselli (Office Munich)
                     SEC Consult Vulnerability Lab

                     An integrated part of SEC Consult
                     Europe | Asia | North America

                     https://www.sec-consult.com

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Vendor description:
-------------------
"ThingWorx is more than an IoT platform; it provides the functionality,
flexibility and scalability that businesses need to drive industrial
innovationaincluding the ability to source, contextualize and synthesize
data while orchestrating processes and delivering powerful web, mobile
and AR experiences."

Source: https://www.ptc.com/en/thingworx8


Business recommendation:
------------------------
ThingWorx allows to configure Things to communicate with other services over
several protocols (e.g. LDAP integration via a DirectoryServices Thing). In
order to communicate with services that require authentification, ThingWorx
provides functionality to associate credentials to a Thing.

During a brief audit it was noticed that ThingWorx Composer leaks the
following sensitive data:

 1) The PBKDF2WithHmac512 password hash of a user Thing
 2) The AES encrypted password of several Things containing password attributes

Furthermore, the password used for encryption is hard-coded and thus identical
along all installations.

Besides the above mentioned vulnerabilities a reflected cross-site scripting
vulnerability was identified in the ThingWorx SQUEAL search function.

The vendor provides a patch which should be installed immediately.
It is recommended to perform further thorough security audits as the product
may be affected by other potential security vulnerabilities.


Vulnerability overview/description:
-----------------------------------
1) Disclosure of User Password Hashes to Privileged Users (CVE-2018-17216)
ThingWorx discloses the PBKDF2WithHmac512 hashed passwords of its application
users when doing exports with an administrative account. This enables an
attacker to conduct offline brute-force or dictionary attacks against the
obtained password hashes.


2) Disclosure of Encrypted Credentials and Use of Hard-Coded Passwords
(CVE-2018-17217)
A critical information disclosure vulnerability leaks the AES encrypted
passwords of services configured within ThingWorx. Due to a hard-coded
master password in the SecureData class, an attacker is able to decrypt the
obtained passwords which grants him access to other services. The AES encrypted
password gets disclosed in the server response when a user/attacker visits a
Thing that contains credentials.


3) Reflected Cross-Site Scripting (CVE-2018-17218)
The JavaScript part of the ThingWorx SQUEAL search functionality
(searchExpression parameter) which is responsible for parsing the obtained JSON
response fails to properly sanitize user supplied input. If the victim views
attacker-prepared content (e.g. on a website or in an HTML email) an attacker
is able to execute arbitrary actions in the context of its victims' sessions.


Proof of concept:
-----------------
The proof of concept has been removed from this advisory.


Vulnerable / tested versions:
-----------------------------
The vulnerabilities have been verified to exist in version 8.0.1-b39 which was
the latest version available at the time of the test.

The vendor provided further affected version information. See the Solution
section for reference.


Vendor contact timeline:
------------------------
2018-03-14: Contacting vendor through email
2018-03-16: Advisory sent to vendor via encrypted mail
2018-03 - 2018-09: Multiple phone calls with PTC R&D department
            discussing release & multi-party disclosure
2018-08-15: Vendor provided private notifications to customers to give
            45 days to upgrade
2018-10-01: Coordinated release of SEC Consult advisory


Solution:
---------
Best recommendation is to upgrade to the latest version of ThingWorx
to version 8.3.2 (at time of writing).

For newer verions, the issue of the hard coded password has been fixed
and the SQUEAL function removed.

The minimum upgrade to obtain mitigations for all 3 issues depends
on the version of ThingWorx in use.

For ThingWorx versions 6.5-7.4, upgrade to 7.4.14+
For ThingWorx version 8.0.x, upgrade to 8.0.12+
For ThingWorx version 8.1.x, upgrade to 8.1.7+
For ThingWorx version 8.2.x, upgrade to 8.2.4+

The vendor always recommends upgrading to the latest availabe service pack.

See the following advisory by the vendor for further information:
https://www.ptc.com/en/support/article?n=CS291004


Workaround:
-----------
1) Disclosure of User Password Hashes to Privileged Users
To limit exposure, disabling all native ThingWorx users and solely rely on
users that make use of Active Directory or Single Sign On (SSO) authentication,
since the password hashes are then not saved within ThingWorx.

2) Disclosure of Encrypted Credentials and Use of Hard-Coded Passwords
None.

3) Reflected Cross-Site Scripting
This issue only exists because of a deprecated feature called SQUEAL. Removal
of this function will eliminate the XSS issue.
a. This SQUEAL functionality is already removed in ThingWorx 8.1.0+.
b. For versions older than 8.1.0, a workaround is available at the PTC support
   site.

Updating to fix all 3 issues is recommended.


Advisory URL:
-------------
https://www.sec-consult.com/en/vulnerability-lab/advisories/index.html


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About SEC Consult Vulnerability Lab
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recommendation about the risk profile of new technologies.

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EOF M. Tomaselli / @2018