CVE-2023-2943
📋 TL;DR
CVE-2023-2943 is a code injection vulnerability in OpenEMR that allows attackers to execute arbitrary code on affected systems. This affects OpenEMR installations prior to version 7.0.1. Healthcare organizations using vulnerable versions are at risk of complete system compromise.
💻 Affected Systems
- OpenEMR
📦 What is this software?
Openemr by Open Emr
⚠️ Risk & Real-World Impact
Worst Case
Complete system takeover with remote code execution, patient data theft, ransomware deployment, and lateral movement within healthcare networks.
Likely Case
Unauthorized access to patient health records (PHI), modification of medical data, installation of backdoors, and potential HIPAA compliance violations.
If Mitigated
Limited impact with proper network segmentation, but still potential for data exfiltration from the OpenEMR system.
🎯 Exploit Status
Exploit details are publicly available in the huntr.dev bounty report. Attack requires some level of access but is technically simple to execute.
🛠️ Fix & Mitigation
✅ Official Fix
Patch Version: 7.0.1
Vendor Advisory: https://github.com/openemr/openemr/commit/c1c0805696ca68577c37bf30e29f90e5f3e0f1a9
Restart Required: Yes
Instructions:
1. Backup your OpenEMR database and files. 2. Download OpenEMR 7.0.1 or later from the official repository. 3. Follow the OpenEMR upgrade documentation. 4. Restart the web server service. 5. Verify the patch is applied by checking the version.
🔧 Temporary Workarounds
Input Validation Enhancement
allImplement additional input validation and sanitization for user-controlled parameters
# Add custom validation in affected PHP files
# Example: filter_var($input, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
Web Application Firewall Rules
allDeploy WAF rules to block code injection patterns
# ModSecurity rule example: SecRule ARGS "@rx (eval|system|exec|passthru|shell_exec)" "id:1001,phase:2,deny"
🧯 If You Can't Patch
- Isolate OpenEMR system from internet and restrict network access to authorized users only
- Implement strict access controls and monitor for unusual activity in OpenEMR logs
🔍 How to Verify
Check if Vulnerable:
Check OpenEMR version in the admin interface or by examining the version.php file: cat /path/to/openemr/version.php | grep 'v_\|\$v_'Check Version:
php -r "include '/path/to/openemr/version.php'; echo \$v_\$v_tag;"Verify Fix Applied:
Confirm version is 7.0.1 or higher and verify the specific commit c1c0805696ca68577c37bf30e29f90e5f3e0f1a9 is present in git history📡 Detection & Monitoring
Log Indicators:
- Unusual PHP function calls in web server logs
- Multiple failed injection attempts
- Unexpected process execution from web user context
Network Indicators:
- Outbound connections from OpenEMR server to unknown destinations
- Unusual data exfiltration patterns
SIEM Query:
source="apache.log" OR source="nginx.log" | search "eval(" OR "system(" OR "exec(" | where src_ip="OpenEMR_Server_IP"