Cloud security firm Wiz has discovered two critical vulnerabilities in Alibaba Cloud’s ApsaraDB RDS for PostgreSQL and AnalyticDB for PostgreSQL. The flaws, collectively dubbed BrokenSesame, enable attackers to breach tenant isolation protections and access data belonging to other users.
The vulnerabilities were a privilege escalation issue in AnalyticDB and a remote code execution flaw in ApsaraDB RDS. An attacker can chain the two vulnerabilities to elevate privileges to root within the container, escape to the Kubernetes node, and obtain unauthorized access to the API server.
The researchers used node’s kubelet credentials to examine various cluster resources, including secrets, service accounts, and pods. Upon testing the credentials against the container image registry, the researchers discovered they had write permissions.
With write permissions, an attacker can overwrite container images and potentially carry out a supply-chain attack on the entire service and other services’ images. The experts focused on devising attack techniques to break cloud isolation by bypassing the security boundaries implemented by cloud providers and gaining access to other customers’ sensitive data.
Wiz reported the flaws to Alibaba Cloud in December 2022, and the company fixed them on April 12, 2023.
While there is no evidence that these vulnerabilities were exploited in attacks in the wild, the discovery highlights the importance of multi-factor authentication (MFA) for console and root/admin users.
Wiz found that 76% of organizations don’t enforce MFA for console users, while 58% of organizations don’t enforce MFA for root/admin users. It is critical to enforce MFA to prevent unauthorized access and mitigate the risk of supply-chain attacks.
