How to Fix CVE-2023-22515- A Critical Privilege Escalation Vulnerability in Confluence Data Center and Server?

Confluence is a popular wiki-based collaboration tool developed by Atlassian that helps teams to collaborate and share knowledge efficiently. Atlassian offers the Confluence Data Center and Server versions for large enterprises that need additional scalability, security, and customizability compared to the SaaS Confluence Cloud version.

Recently, Atlassian disclosed an actively exploited critical severity authentication vulnerability in the Confluence Data Center and Server, tracked as CVE-2023-22515. This vulnerability could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to create an administrator account and gain full control of the vulnerable Confluence instance.

In this blog, we will discuss a summary of the CVE-2023-22515 vulnerability, impacted versions, and step-by-step procedure to fix CVE-2023-22515, a critical severity Privilege Escalation Vulnerability in Confluence.

A Short Note About Confluence Server and Data Center

Confluence Server is an on-premises version of Confluence optimized for large enterprises. It provides better customization, scalability, compliance, and data ownership compared to the SaaS version.

Confluence Data Center is a highly scalable on-premises version of Confluence Server designed for large enterprises. It provides high availability, load balancing, clustering, and failover capabilities for large deployments.

Both Confluence Server and Data Center provide functionality like:

The Summary of CVE-2023-22515

As per Atlassian’s advisory, CVE-2023-22515 is a critical severity authentication vulnerability that could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to create an administrator account in vulnerable Confluence Server and Data Center installations.

This vulnerability exists due to improper access control in the /setup endpoints in Confluence. By exploiting this vulnerability, an attacker could gain full admin access to the Confluence instance. Atlassian has rated this vulnerability as a critical severity and recommends upgrading Confluence immediately.

Confluence Server and Data Center Versions Affected by CVE-2023-22515

The following versions of the Confluence Server and Data Center are impacted by CVE-2023-22515:

Note: Confluence Server and Data Center Versions below 8.0.0 are not affected.

How to Fix CVE-2023-22515?

To fix CVE-2023-22515, Atlassian has released patched versions of Confluence Data Center and Server. We recommend upgrading to one of the following fixed versions or any later release:

The Confluence release notes provide details about the latest versions and changes. You can download the latest fixed Confluence version from the Atlassian download center. The LTS releases are recommended if you can upgrade Confluence only once annually, as they get critical bug fixes and security updates for 2 years.

Step-by-Step Guide to Upgrade Confluence and Fix CVE-2023-22515

Upgrading to the latest patched Confluence version is highly recommended to fix this vulnerability. Here is a step-by-step guide to safely upgrade your Confluence deployment and remediate CVE-2023-22515:

Prerequisites

Before starting the upgrade, ensure you have:

Time needed: 10 minutes.

Step-by-Step Guide to Upgrade Confluence and Fix CVE-2023-22515

How to Mitigate CVE-2023-22515?

If you are not in a position to upgrade Confluence immediately, you can implement these temporary mitigations to reduce exposure from CVE-2023-22515:

<security-constraint>
 <web-resource-collection>
   <url-pattern>/setup/*</url-pattern>
   <http-method-omission>*</http-method-omission>
</web-resource-collection>
<auth-constraint />
</security-constraint>

This mitigation prevents Confluence administrators from executing setup actions like initial configuration and Data Center migration. You will need to remove these changes if you need to perform such actions later. Re-apply the mitigation after completing the setup tasks.

Bottom Line

CVE-2023-22515 is a highly critical vulnerability that could allow the takeover of vulnerable Confluence Server and Data Center instances. If you use an exposed or internet-facing Confluence instance, we strongly recommend upgrading to the latest patched version immediately after thoroughly testing upgrades in a staging environment. You should also restrict network access to the Confluence instance as a temporary workaround.

Atlassian has provided detailed remediation instructions, workarounds, and FAQs around this vulnerability to help secure your Confluence deployment. Stay vigilant about Confluence security updates and advisories to protect your organization against attacks leveraging vulnerabilities like CVE-2023-22515.

We hope this post helps you know how to fix CVE-2023-22515- a critical Privilege Escalation Vulnerability in Confluence Data Center and Server. Thanks for reading this post. Please share this post and help secure the digital world. Visit our website thesecmaster.com, and our social media page on F, LinkedIn, Twitter, Telegram, Tumblr, Medium, and Instagram and subscribe to receive updates like this.