Rewterz Threat Advisory – CVE-2019-1573- Multiple Enterprise VPN Apps Allow Attackers to Bypass Authentication

Severity

Medium

Analysis Summary

Due to a vulnerability, many enterprise VPN applications are storing authentication and session cookies insecurely which may allow an attacker to access authentication and/or session tokens and reuse them to spoof the VPN session and gain access as the user. This allows attackers to potentially bypass authentication.

This failure of encrypting sensitive or critical information could allow would-be attackers to intercept traffic data, read it and inject malicious code/data to perform a Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attack.

The following products and versions store the cookie insecurely in log files:

• Palo Alto Networks GlobalProtect Agent 4.1.0 for Windows and GlobalProtect Agent 4.1.10 and earlier for macOS0 (CVE-2019-1573)
• Pulse Secure Connect Secure prior to 8.1R14, 8.2, 8.3R6, and 9.0R2

The following products and versions store the cookie insecurely in memory:

• Palo Alto Networks GlobalProtect Agent 4.1.0 for Windows and GlobalProtect Agent 4.1.10 and earlier for macOS0 (CVE-2019-1573)
• Pulse Secure Connect Secure prior to 8.1R14, 8.2, 8.3R6, and 9.0R2
• Cisco AnyConnect 4.7.x and prior

GlobalProtect Agent for macOS 5.0 is NOT affected.

Impact

• Authentication Bypass
• System access
• Information Disclosure

Affected Products

• Palo Alto Networks GlobalProtect Agent 4.1.0 for Windows
• GlobalProtect Agent 4.1.10 and earlier for macOS0
• Cisco AnyConnect 4.7.x and prior
• Pulse Secure Connect Secure prior to 8.1R14/8.2/8.3R6/9.0R2

Remediation

Update to:

GlobalProtect Agent 4.1.11 and later for macOS
GlobalProtect Agent 4.1.1 for windows

Pulse Secure Connect Secure Point 8.1R14, 8.2, 8.3R6 or 9.0R2

Also make sure to enable two-factor authentication for all authentication processes rather than relying on simple passwords.