Critical Flaws Found in Widely Used IPTV Software for Online Streaming Services

Jun 6, 2019

Security researchers have discovered multiple critical
vulnerabilities in a popular IPTV middleware platform that is
currently being used by more than a thousand regional and
international online media streaming services to manage their
millions of subscribers.

Discovered by security researchers at CheckPoint, the
vulnerabilities reside in the administrative panel of Ministra TV
platform, which if exploited, could allow attackers to bypass
authentication and extract subscribers’ database, including their
financial details.
^[1]

Besides this, the flaws could also allow attackers to replace
broadcast and steam any content of their choice on the TV screens
of all affected customer networks.

Ministra TV platform, previously known as Stalker Portal, is a
software written in PHP that works as a middleware platform for
media streaming services for managing Internet Protocol television
(IPTV), video-on-demand (VOD) and over-the-top (OTT) content,
licenses and their subscribers.

Developed by Ukrainian company Infomir, the Ministra software is
currently being used by over a thousand online media streaming
services with the highest numbers of providers in the United States
(199), following with Netherlands (137), Russia (120), France (117)
and Canada (105).

CheckPoint researchers find a logical vulnerability in an
authentication function of the Ministra platform that fails to
validate the request, allowing a remote attacker to bypass
authentication and perform SQL injection through a separate
vulnerability, which otherwise only an authenticated attacker can
exploit.
As shown in the video demonstration, when it further chained
together with a PHP Object Injection vulnerability, the researchers
were successfully able to remotely execute arbitrary code on the
targeted server.

“In this particular case, we used the authentication bypass to
perform an SQL Injection on the server,” the researchers explain.
“With that knowledge, we escalated this issue to an Object
Injection vulnerability, which in turn allowed us to execute
arbitrary code on the server, potentially impacting not only the
provider but also the provider’s clients.”

CheckPoint researchers reported their findings to the company,
which has now patched the issues with the release of Ministra
version 5.4.1.

Vendors are strongly recommended to update their system to the
latest version as soon as possible.

References

^{^}
CheckPoint
(research.checkpoint.com)

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OWASP TOP !0

Injection. Injection flaws, such as SQL, NoSQL, OS, and LDAP injection, occur when untrusted data is sent to an interpreter as part of a command or query. The attacker’s hostile data can trick the interpreter into executing unintended commands or accessing data without proper authorization. Broken Authentication. Application functions related to authentication and session management are often implemented incorrectly, allowing attackers to compromise passwords, keys, or session tokens, or to exploit other implementation flaws to assume other users’ identities temporarily or permanently. Sensitive Data Exposure. Many web applications and APIs do not properly protect sensitive data, such as financial, healthcare, and PII. Attackers may steal or modify such weakly protected data to conduct credit card fraud, identity theft, or other crimes. Sensitive data may be compromised without extra protection, such as encryption at rest or in transit, and requires special precautions when exchanged with the browser. XML External Entities (XXE). Many older or poorly configured XML processors evaluate external entity references within XML documents. External entities can be used to disclose internal files using the file URI handler, internal file shares, internal port scanning, remote code execution, and denial of service attacks. Broken Access Control. Restrictions on what authenticated users are allowed to do are often not properly enforced. Attackers can exploit these flaws to access unauthorized functionality and/or data, such as access other users’ accounts, view sensitive files, modify other users’ data, change access rights, etc. Security Misconfiguration. Security misconfiguration is the most commonly seen issue. This is commonly a result of insecure default configurations, incomplete or ad hoc configurations, open cloud storage, misconfigured HTTP headers, and verbose error messages containing sensitive information. Not only must all operating systems, frameworks, libraries, and applications be securely configured, but they must be patched/upgraded in a timely fashion. Cross-Site Scripting XSS. XSS flaws occur whenever an application includes untrusted data in a new web page without proper validation or escaping, or updates an existing web page with user-supplied data using a browser API that can create HTML or JavaScript. XSS allows attackers to execute scripts in the victim’s browser which can hijack user sessions, deface web sites, or redirect the user to malicious sites. Insecure Deserialization. Insecure deserialization often leads to remote code execution. Even if deserialization flaws do not result in remote code execution, they can be used to perform attacks, including replay attacks, injection attacks, and privilege escalation attacks. Using Components with Known Vulnerabilities. Components, such as libraries, frameworks, and other software modules, run with the same privileges as the application. If a vulnerable component is exploited, such an attack can facilitate serious data loss or server takeover. Applications and APIs using components with known vulnerabilities may undermine application defenses and enable various attacks and impacts. Insufficient Logging & Monitoring. Insufficient logging and monitoring, coupled with missing or ineffective integration with incident response, allows attackers to further attack systems, maintain persistence, pivot to more systems, and tamper, extract, or destroy data. Most breach studies show time to detect a breach is over 200 days, typically detected by external parties rather than internal processes or monitoring.

Critical Flaws Found in Widely Used IPTV Software for Online Streaming Services

References

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