CVE-2023-2530: Orchestrator Remote Code Execution Vulnerability in Puppet Enterprise
In the cybersecurity world, where vigilance and proactiveness are key, we have come across a critical security vulnerability in Puppet Enterprise (PE). It has been identified as CVE-2023-2530 with a substantial Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) score of 9.9, placing it in the realm of the utmost severity. This pressing issue is a cause for immediate concern, and remediation is crucial to ensure the security of the IT infrastructures managed by PE.
Puppet Enterprise, with its expansive feature set and sophisticated automation capabilities, offers users immense agility and productivity. It has not only proven to be a boon for individuals managing smaller infrastructures but also for organizations that handle thousands of nodes. Puppet’s open-source prowess, coupled with PE’s proprietary features such as role-based access control, reporting, orchestration services, and a graphical user interface, has been pivotal to its success.
A key component of PE’s extensive suite of services is the Puppet Orchestrator. This element permits the execution of on-demand Puppet runs, tasks, or plans. This is all made possible through pe-orchestration-services, a Java Virtual Machine (JVM)-based service in PE, which implements Puppet Execution Protocol (PXP) agents to execute orchestrated changes across the IT infrastructure.
However, beneath these layers of productivity and automation lies a security vulnerability of significant concern. A privilege escalation vulnerability allowing remote code execution has been detected in the orchestrator service, threatening the secure state of the IT landscape.
The vulnerable software versions encompass Puppet Enterprise 2021.7.0 through 2021.7.3, along with the 2023.0 and 2023.1 versions. It is of utmost importance that organizations running these specific versions take immediate action to secure their infrastructure.
Fortunately, the Puppet team has already responded promptly to this alarming discovery, and the CVE-2023-2530 vulnerability has been addressed in the subsequent releases of Puppet Enterprise. The remediated software versions are Puppet Enterprise 2021.7.4 and Puppet Enterprise 2023.2.
