#Apache CouchDB CVE-2018-17188: Remote Privilege Escalations (Affects all
versions < 2.3.0)
Date: 17.12.2018
Affected: All Versions of Apache CouchDB
Severity: Medium
Vendor: The Apache Software Foundation
## Description
Prior to CouchDB version 2.3.0, CouchDB allowed for runtime-configuration of
key components of the database. In some cases, this lead to vulnerabilities
where CouchDB admin users could access the underlying operating system as the
CouchDB user. Together with other vulnerabilities, it allowed full system entry
for unauthenticated users.
These vulnerabilities were fixed and disclosed in the following CVE reports:
• CVE-2018-11769: Apache CouchDB Remote Code Execution[1]
• CVE-2018-8007: Apache CouchDB Remote Code Execution[2]
• CVE-2017-12636: Apache CouchDB Remote Code Execution[3]
• CVE-2017-12635: Apache CouchDB Remote Privilege Escalation[4]
Rather than waiting for new vulnerabilities to be discovered, and fixing them
as they come up, the CouchDB development team decided to make changes to avoid
this entire class of vulnerabilities.
With CouchDB version 2.3.0, CouchDB no longer can configure key components at
runtime. While some flexibility is needed for speciality configurations of
CouchDB, the configuration was changed from being available at runtime to
start-up time. And as such now requires shell access to the CouchDB server.
This closes all future paths for vulnerabilities of this type.
## Mitigation
All users should upgrade to CouchDB 2.3.0.
Upgrades from previous 2.x versions in the same series should be seamless.
Users on earlier versions should consult with upgrade notes.
## Credit
This issue was discovered by the Apple Information Security team.
—
[1]: http://docs.couchdb.org/en/stable/cve/2017-12635.html
<http://docs.couchdb.org/en/stable/cve/2017-12635.html>
[2]: http://docs.couchdb.org/en/stable/cve/2017-12636.html
<http://docs.couchdb.org/en/stable/cve/2017-12636.html>
[3]: http://docs.couchdb.org/en/stable/cve/2018-11769.html
<http://docs.couchdb.org/en/stable/cve/2018-11769.html>
[3]: http://docs.couchdb.org/en/stable/cve/2018-8007.html
<http://docs.couchdb.org/en/stable/cve/2018-8007.html>
