Openfire (previously known as Wildfire, and Jive Messenger) is an instant messaging (IM) and groupchat server for the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP). It is written in Java and licensed under the Apache License 2.0.

On May 26, 2023, Openfire's administrative console, a web-based application, was found to be vulnerable to a path traversal attack via the setup environment using the path http://localhost:9090/setup/setup-s/%u002e%u002e/%u002e%u002e/. Endpoints such as log.jsp, user-groups.jsp and user-create.jsp can be used to gain unauthorized admin access.
It allows an unauthenticated user to use the unauthenticated Openfire Setup Environment in an already configured Openfire environment to access restricted pages in the Openfire Admin Console reserved for administrative users.

The vulnerability affects all versions of Openfire that have been released since April 2015, starting with version 3.10.0 and is patched in Openfire release 4.7.5, 4.6.8 and 4.8.0 and later.

Reading the security advisory, it reminded me of a previous Openfire vulnerability CVE-2008-6508 discovered in 2008 that faced a similar issue. There is even an existing Metasploit module available a.k.a. exploit\multi\http\openfire_auth_bypass that exploits this vulnerability (see Metasploit PR 522).

With that in mind, it should be not too difficult to build a new variant that exploits the latest vulnerability CVE-2023-32315.

The attack sequence is quite simple:

1. Grab the cookies using the path traversal vulnerability via http://<IP>:9090/setup/setup-s/%u002e%u002e/%u002e%u002e/user-groups.jsp
   
2. Use the cookies to add an admin user using the path traversal vulnerability via http://<IP>:9090/setup/setup-s/%u002e%u002e/%u002e%u002e/user-create.jsp
   
3. Upload an Openfire plugin weaponized with a java payload triggering an RCE via endpoint http://<IP>:9090/plugin-admin.jsp. For step 3, you need understand how to create an customized Openfire plugin which is described in more detail here.
   

And as usual, I took the liberty to code a nice Metasploit module that does it all for you.
You can find the module here in my local repository or as PR 18173 at the Metasploit Github development.

This module has been tested on:

Ubuntu Linux 22.04

• Openfire 3.10.1, 4.0.4, 4.1.0, 4.2.0, 4.3.0, 4.4.0, 4.5.0, 4.6.0. 4.7.0, 4.7.1, 4.7.3
  
• Java 7, 8, 17
  

Windows Server 2019 Datacenter

• Openfire 4.7.3
  
• Java 20
  

You can setup your own testing environment by following the instructions below.

Instructions for an Openfire installation:
Download Openfire releases here.
Follow installation instructions here.

Mitigation

Please update your Openfire application to version 4.8.0 or higher and or upgrade to the patched versions 4.7.5 or 4.6.8.

References

Igniterealtime Security Advisory
CVE-2023-32315
Openfire Authentication Bypass RCE – h00die-gr3y Metasploit local repository
Metasploit PR 18173
Openfire plugin development
Openfire release downloads
Openfire installation instructions