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Security Vulnerabilities: Microsoft Azure OMI agents problems

This document (000020388) is provided subject to the disclaimer at the end of this document.

Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15

Situation

Security researchers found that Microsoft Azure injects a specific health monitoring package "OMI agent" into public cloud Linux instances when certain other Azure services are enabled for a given instance.

The services known to trigger the injection of the vulnerable package are as follows:

- Azure Automation
- Azure Automatic Update
- Azure Operations Management Suite (OMS)
- Azure Log Analytics
- Azure Configuration Management
- Azure Diagnostics

The deployed code has several easy to exploit remote vulnerabilities.

- CVE-2021-38647: Unauthenticated RCE as root (Severity: 9.8)
- CVE-2021-38648: Privilege Escalation vulnerability (Severity: 7.8)
- CVE-2021-38645: Privilege Escalation vulnerability (Severity: 7.8)
- CVE-2021-38649: Privilege Escalation vulnerability (Severity: 7.0)

Resolution

To see if your instance is using the code in question, use:

    rpm -qa omi

As the package is maintained and injected by Microsoft into Azure instances, and is not delivered by SUSE, SUSE can not provide fixes.

Solution:

See https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2021-38647

Steps:

- Verify your network settings and ensure ports 5985, 5986, 1270 are not
  exposed to the Internet. If these ports are exposed to the Internet it is
  recommended to consider your system as compromised.
 
- Redeploy your instance using a network construct with ports 5985, 5986,
1270
  closed to the Internet.

If this is not feasible:

- follow the install steps for SUSE on https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/Linux-Package-Repository-for-Microsoft-Software,
  short version:

  - SLE12: sudo rpm -Uvh https://packages.microsoft.com/config/sles/12/packages-microsoft-prod.rpm
  - SLE15: sudo rpm -Uvh https://packages.microsoft.com/config/sles/15/packages-microsoft-prod.rpm

- run "zypper up" to update the omi agents from the newly added repo.

Status

Security Alert

Additional Information

References:
https://www.wiz.io/blog/secret-agent-exposes-azure-customers-to-unauthorized-code-execution
https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2021-38647

Disclaimer

This Support Knowledgebase provides a valuable tool for SUSE customers and parties interested in our products and solutions to acquire information, ideas and learn from one another. Materials are provided for informational, personal or non-commercial use within your organization and are presented "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND.

  • Document ID:000020388
  • Creation Date: 15-Sep-2021
  • Modified Date:16-Sep-2021
    • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
    • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications

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