BMC emulators developed in OpenStack community do not preserve passwords on VMs

Summary

When deploying VirtualBMC or Sushy-Tools in an unsupported, production-like configuration, it can remove secret data, including VNC passwords, from a libvirt domain permanently. Operators impacted by this vulnerability must reconfigure any secret data, including VNC passwords, for the libvirt domain.

These virtual machine emulators are tools to help emulate a physical machine's Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) to aid in development and testing of software that would otherwise require physical machines to perform integration testing activities. They are not intended or supported for production or long-term use of any kind.

Affected Services / Software

Sushy-Tools, <=0.21.0
VirtualBMC, <=2.2.2

There is no impact to any OpenStack software or services intended for production use.

Patches

VirtualBMC: https://review.opendev.org/c/openstack/virtualbmc/+/862620
Sushy-Tools: https://review.opendev.org/c/openstack/sushy-tools/+/862625

Discussion

To perform some advanced operations on Libvirt virtual machines, the underlying XML document describing the virtual machine's domain must be extracted, modified, and then updated. These specific actions are for aspects such as "setting a boot device" (VirtualBMC, Sushy-Tools), Setting a boot mode (Sushy-Tools), and setting a virtual media device (Sushy-Tools).

This issue is triggered when a VM has any kind of "secure" information defined in the XML domain definition. If an operator deploys VirtualBMC or Sushy-Tools to manage one of these libvirt VMs, the first time any action is performed that requires rewriting of the XML domain definition, all secure information -- including a VNC console password, if set -- is lost and removed from the domain definition, leaving the libvirt VM's exposed to a malicious console user.

Recommended Actions

Operators who may have been impacted by this vulnerability should immediately remove use of VirtualBMC and/or Sushy-Tools from their production environment. Then, validate and if necessary, reconfigure passwords for VNC access or any other impacted secrets.

Credits

Julia Kreger from Red Hat

References

Author: Jay Faulkner, G-Research Open Source Software

Original Storyboard bug: https://storyboard.openstack.org/#!/story/2010382

Mailing List : [Security] tag on openstack-discuss@lists.openstack.org

OpenStack Security Project : https://launchpad.net/~openstack-ossg

CVE: CVE-2022-44020

Notes

The OpenStack team will ensure documentation is updated to clearly state these software packages are intended for development/CI use only, and are not safe to run in production.

OSSN/OSSN-0091

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