Impact of CVE-2023-46604

Products

• VMware Smart Assurance

Issue/Introduction

• Vulnerability ID: CVE-2023-46604:
• Vulnerability Summary: The Java OpenWire protocol marshaller is vulnerable to Remote Code Execution. This vulnerability may allow a remote attacker with network access to either a Java-based OpenWire broker or client to run arbitrary shell commands by manipulating serialized class types in the OpenWire protocol to cause either the client or the broker (respectively) to instantiate any class on the classpath. Users are recommended to upgrade both brokers and clients to version 5.15.16, 5.16.7, 5.17.6, or 5.18.3 which fixes this issue.
• Article discusses impact of CVE on NCM. 
• Apache ActiveMQ critical vulnerability: CVE-2023-46604

Environment

NCM 10.1.x

Cause

The file activemq-broker-5.16.4.jar, mentioned in CVE-2023-46604, resides in the following two NCM directories:

/opt/smarts-ncm/Transformation/lib/

/opt/smarts-ncm/cm/daemon/lib/

Resolution

The vulnerable component "OpenWire protocol" as mentioned in the CVE is not being used by NCM thus NCM is not impacted from this vulnerability.

Additional Information

As an alternative, we are using the tcp://<IP>:61616 transport connector, which corresponds to the OpenWire protocol in ActiveMQ. This protocol is used internally by ActiveMQ to communicate between the client and the broker.