Uncovering Zero-Day Vulnerability CVE-2023-27290 in IBM Instana using CERT-X-GEN
Overview
IBM Instana is a leading Application Performance Monitoring (APM) platform designed to provide real-time observability for cloud-native and hybrid IT environments. It offers end-to-end visibility into complex applications, making it a critical tool for performance optimization and operational efficiency. However, even advanced platforms like Instana can be susceptible to vulnerabilities, as demonstrated by CVE-2023-27290, a critical zero-day flaw affecting its Docker-based datastores.
The Challenges
The vulnerability arose from IBM Instana’s Docker-based datastores (Cassandra, Zookeeper, Redis, CockroachDB, Kubernetes, Docker) lacking authentication, leaving them exposed to unauthorized access.
Identifying and securing over 150 IP addresses across the global address space that were potentially affected was a daunting task due to the widescale and distribution of exposed services.
Validating the vulnerability required the ability to generate and execute exploits quickly and efficiently for various Docker services running on the identified IPs.
The potential for exploitation was high, as gaining unauthorized access to the datastores could lead to data theft, remote code execution, and compromise of critical systems.
Ensuring a responsible disclosure process involved swiftly notifying IBM of the issue, collaborating on remediation strategies, and managing public communication to prevent exploitation before a fix was deployed.
Solution Provided by our Experts
Our team at BugB Technologies implemented a comprehensive approach to identify and mitigate CVE-2023-27290:
Using the CERT-X-GEN framework, we conducted a thorough recon of the global address space to identify IP addresses associated with IBM Instana.
CERT-X-GEN mapped out all services running on these IPs, including Docker-based datastores like Cassandra, Zookeeper, Redis, CockroachDB, Kubernetes, and Docker.
CERT-X-GEN’s AI-powered exploit generation capability was leveraged to generate custom exploits for each identified service, testing for unauthenticated access and other potential vulnerabilities.
The framework was able to validate the presence of the vulnerability across multiple services without false positives, confirming the extent of the issue.
Using the generated exploits, we gained unauthorized access to multiple Docker-based datastores, extracting sensitive information and demonstrating the potential for remote code execution.
We identified over 150 IP addresses affected by the vulnerability, confirming that it was a widespread issue across various regions.
After validating the vulnerability, we immediately reported the findings to IBM. Our detailed report included all affected IPs, exploit details, and recommended remediation steps.
IBM’s security team acted promptly, issuing a high-severity CVSS score of 9.1 and creating the CVE-2023-27290 entry to notify affected users.
We worked closely with IBM’s security team to implement robust authentication mechanisms and other security controls for the affected datastores, significantly reducing the risk of exploitation.
The Results we Achieved
100% Vulnerability Identification Across Affected IPs
99.99% Reduction in Unauthorized Access Risk
100% AI Generated Exploit Writing
Zero False Positives
$35M in Potential Data Breach Costs Avoided
$1 Million Saved in Incident Response and Remediation Costs
Benefits
100%
Vulnerability Identification Across Affected IPs
$35M
in Potential Data Breach Costs Avoided