CVE-2024-41766
📋 TL;DR
This vulnerability in IBM Engineering Lifecycle Optimization - Publishing allows remote attackers to cause denial of service by sending specially crafted regular expressions that trigger excessive resource consumption. It affects versions 7.0.2 and 7.0.3 of the software, potentially disrupting publishing services for engineering teams.
💻 Affected Systems
- IBM Engineering Lifecycle Optimization - Publishing
📦 What is this software?
⚠️ Risk & Real-World Impact
Worst Case
Complete service unavailability requiring system restart, disrupting engineering documentation workflows and potentially causing project delays.
Likely Case
Temporary service degradation or crashes affecting publishing functionality until the process restarts.
If Mitigated
Minimal impact with proper network segmentation and rate limiting preventing exploitation attempts.
🎯 Exploit Status
Attack requires sending malicious regular expressions to vulnerable endpoints. No authentication needed.
🛠️ Fix & Mitigation
✅ Official Fix
Patch Version: Apply interim fix or upgrade to version 7.0.4 or later
Vendor Advisory: https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/7180203
Restart Required: Yes
Instructions:
1. Download the interim fix from IBM Fix Central. 2. Stop the ELOP service. 3. Apply the fix according to IBM documentation. 4. Restart the service. 5. Verify functionality.
🔧 Temporary Workarounds
Network Segmentation
allRestrict access to ELOP publishing service to trusted networks only
Configure firewall rules to allow only authorized IPs to access ELOP ports
Rate Limiting
allImplement request rate limiting to prevent DoS attacks
Configure web server or load balancer to limit requests per IP
🧯 If You Can't Patch
- Implement strict network access controls to limit who can reach the ELOP service
- Deploy WAF with regex attack protection rules and monitor for DoS attempts
🔍 How to Verify
Check if Vulnerable:
Check ELOP version via administrative console or by examining installation files. Versions 7.0.2 and 7.0.3 are vulnerable.Check Version:
Check the version in the ELOP administrative console or review installation logsVerify Fix Applied:
Verify version is 7.0.4 or later, or check that interim fix is applied via IBM installation verification tools.📡 Detection & Monitoring
Log Indicators:
- Multiple failed requests with complex patterns
- Service restart logs
- High CPU/memory usage alerts
- Regular expression processing errors
Network Indicators:
- Unusual patterns of requests to publishing endpoints
- Requests containing complex regex patterns
SIEM Query:
source="elop_logs" AND (message="service restart" OR message="high resource" OR message="regex error")