Researcher finds flaw in SAP's MaxDB

A security researcher has found a remote command execution exploit in SAP's MaxDB database on the Windows, Linux and Solaris platforms.

Researcher Luigi Auriemma published the flaw in MaxDB versions 7.6.03 build 007 and below. MaxDB (all ZDNet resources and SAP wiki) is an SAP-certified open source database. MaxDB powers SAP's Business ByDesign. In October, MySQL and SAP announced that support for MaxDB will be handled by SAP.

Auriemma describes the following:

The MaxDB server executes "cons.exe DATABASE COMMAND" through system() when some special commands are called by the user. Some of these special commands are "show" and "exec_sdbinfo" and this last one is just one of the small amount of commands which can be executed by the unauthenticated users before logging in.

The usage of system() for executing the cons program allows an external unauthenticated attacker to execute any command he wants on the target SAP MaxDB server simply passing the "&&" or other patterns for the execution of multiple commands in the shell.

So it's just enough to use the following SAP command to see the content of C: on Windows (the bug is naturally exploitable on any other platform supported by the server):

exec_sdbinfo && echo dir c:\ | cmd.exe

Then the rest and all the other possibilities of exploiting this vulnerability are in the fantasy of the attacker...

There's no fix for this flaw.