Magento Security Update (1.7.0.2) – Zend_XmlRpc Vulnerability

A few days ago, Magento 1.7.0.2 was released to fix a very serious security vulnerability that allows attackers to read any file on the web server where the Zend XMLRPC functionality is enabled. This might include password files, configuration files, and possibly even databases if they are stored on the same machine as the Magento web server.

The Magento team provides the following info in their post:

If the patch cannot be applied immediately, the following instructions can be followed to temporarily disable the RPC functionality that contains the vulnerability. Please be advised, any integrations that rely on the XMLRPC API functionality will no longer work after this workaround is implemented.

1. On the Magento web server, navigate to the www-root where Magento app files are stored.
2. In the wwwroot, navigate to /app/code/core/Mage/Api/controllers.
3. Open XmlrpcController.php for editing.
4. Comment out or delete the body of the method: public indexAction()
5. Save the changes.

*The latest releases of Magento (Community Edition 1.7.0.2 and Enterprise Edition 1.12.0.2) incorporate the appropriate patches. please use correct versions of releases 1.7.0.2 and 1.12.0.2 .

Note: This vulnerability comes from Zend_XmlRpc, so not only Magento, but any application that uses it is vulnerable. More details about it here:

Zend_XmlRpc is vulnerable to XML eXternal Entity (XXE) Injection attacks. The SimpleXMLElement class (SimpleXML PHP extension) is used in an insecure way to parse XML data. External entities can be specified by adding a specific DOCTYPE element to XML-RPC requests. By exploiting this vulnerability an application may be coerced to open arbitrary files and/or TCP connections.

Additional details are also available here.

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