CVE-2025-25032
📋 TL;DR
This vulnerability in IBM Cognos Analytics allows authenticated users to send specially crafted requests that exhaust memory resources, causing denial of service. It affects multiple versions of IBM Cognos Analytics 11.2.x and 12.0.x. Only authenticated users can exploit this vulnerability.
💻 Affected Systems
- IBM Cognos Analytics
📦 What is this software?
⚠️ Risk & Real-World Impact
Worst Case
Complete service unavailability for all users due to memory exhaustion, requiring system restart and potentially causing data loss or corruption.
Likely Case
Temporary service degradation or outage affecting multiple users until memory is freed or system is restarted.
If Mitigated
Minimal impact with proper monitoring and rapid response to memory exhaustion events.
🎯 Exploit Status
Exploitation requires authenticated access but the attack vector appears straightforward based on the CWE-770 description.
🛠️ Fix & Mitigation
✅ Official Fix
Patch Version: Apply security updates as specified in IBM advisory
Vendor Advisory: https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/7234674
Restart Required: Yes
Instructions:
1. Review IBM advisory for specific patch versions. 2. Apply appropriate security updates for your version. 3. Restart Cognos Analytics services. 4. Verify the fix is applied.
🔧 Temporary Workarounds
Rate limiting and request filtering
allImplement rate limiting and request size limits to prevent memory exhaustion attacks
Memory monitoring and alerting
allSet up monitoring for memory usage with automatic alerts and auto-restart thresholds
🧯 If You Can't Patch
- Implement strict access controls and least privilege principles for authenticated users
- Deploy web application firewall with DoS protection and memory exhaustion detection rules
🔍 How to Verify
Check if Vulnerable:
Check IBM Cognos Analytics version via administration console or configuration files. If version is 11.2.0-11.2.4 or 12.0.0-12.0.4, system is vulnerable.Check Version:
Check Cognos configuration or administration interface for version informationVerify Fix Applied:
Verify version has been updated to a patched version and test with normal authenticated requests to ensure service stability.📡 Detection & Monitoring
Log Indicators:
- Unusually large request sizes
- Rapid sequence of similar requests from single user
- Memory exhaustion warnings in system logs
- Service restart events
Network Indicators:
- Pattern of large POST requests to Cognos endpoints
- Requests with abnormal payload sizes
SIEM Query:
source="cognos_logs" AND (message="memory" OR message="out of memory" OR message="restart") AND user!="system"