Cyber-Attacks & SAP systems: Is Our Business-Critical Infrastructure Exposed?

Cyber-Attacks &
SAP Systems ®

Is our business-critical infrastructure exposed?

Mariano Nunez
mnunez@onapsis.com

March 15th, 2012

BlackHat Europe 2012

Disclaimer

This publication is copyright 2012 Onapsis, Inc. – All rights reserved.

This publication contains references to the products of SAP AG. SAP, R/3, xApps, xApp, SAP
NetWeaver, Duet, PartnerEdge, ByDesign, SAP Business ByDesign, and other SAP products and
services mentioned herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in
several other countries all over the world.

Business Objects and the Business Objects logo, BusinessObjects, Crystal Reports, Crystal Decisions,
Web Intelligence, Xcelsius and other Business Objects products and services mentioned herein are
trademarks or registered trademarks of Business Objects in the United States and/or other countries.

SAP AG is neither the author nor the publisher of this publication and is not responsible for its content,
and SAP Group shall not be liable for errors or omissions with respect to the materials.

Cyber-attacks on SAP systems www.onapsis.com – © 2012 Onapsis , Inc. – All rights reserved 2

Who is Onapsis, Inc.?
 Company focused in the security of ERP systems and business-critical
infrastructure (SAP®, Siebel®, Oracle® E-Business SuiteTM, PeopleSoft®, JD Edwards® …).
 Working with Global Fortune-100 and large governmental organizations.
 What does Onapsis do?
 Innovative ERP security software (Onapsis X1, Onapsis Bizploit, Onapsis IA).
 ERP security consulting services.
 Trainings on business-critical infrastructure security.

Who am I?
 Co-founder & CEO at Onapsis.
 Discovered 50+ vulnerabilities in SAP, Microsoft, IBM, ...
 Speaker/Trainer at BlackHat, RSA, HackerHalted, HITB, Ekoparty, DeepSec, ...
 Developer of the first opensource SAP/ERP PenTesting frameworks.
 Lead author of the “SAP Security In-Depth” publication.

Cyber-attacks on SAP systems
Attacks to SAP Web Applications
Cyber-attacks www.onapsis.com – © 2012 Onapsis , Inc. – All rights reserved 3

Agenda
 Introduction
 A dangerous status-quo
 External and internal threats
 The current security level of SAP implementations
 The TOP-11 vulnerabilities affecting the SAP infrastructure
 Defending the SAP platform
 Conclusions

Attacks to SAPon SAP Systems
Cyber-attacks Web Applications
Cyber-Attacks to SAP systems www.onapsis.com – © 2012 Onapsis , Inc. – All rights reserved 4

Introduction

Attacks to SAPon SAP Systems www.onapsis.com – © 2012 Onapsis , Inc. – All rights reserved 5

What is SAP?
● Largest provider of business management solutions in the world.
● More than 140.000 implementations around the globe.
● More than 90.000 customers in 120 countries.

● Used by Global Fortune-1000 companies, governmental
organizations and defense agencies to run their every-day business
processes.
● Such as Revenue / Production / Expenditure business cycles.

FINANCIAL PLANNING TREASURY PAYROLL
INVOICING LOGISTICS
SALES BILLING
PRODUCTION PROCUREMENT
Cyber-attacks on SAP Systems www.onapsis.com – © 2012 Onapsis , Inc. – All rights reserved 6

A Dangerous
Status-quo

Attacks to SAPon SAP Systems www.onapsis.com – © 2012 Onapsis , Inc. – All rights reserved 7

What “SAP Security” used to be 5 years ago
● “SAP security” was regarded as a synonym of “Segregation of
Duties controls”.
● Sample goal: “Make sure that if Tim can create a new vendor, he
can not create purchase orders”.
● This was mapped to a SoD matrix with SAP transactions /
authorization objects.

● Most large organizations had “SAP Security” in place: they were
spending hundreds of thousands/millions of dollars in SAP security
yearly by having:
● A dedicated Team of SAP security professionals.
● SoD & GRC software (usually costing $500K-$2M or more).

Cyber-attacks Web Applications www.onapsis.com – © 2012 Onapsis , Inc. – All rights reserved 8

Breaking the status-quo / BlackHat 2007
● The Information Security and Audit communities were doing fine with
that status quo. Most SAP-related security documents and guidelines only
dealt with SoD issues.

● One day, back in 2005, we were hired to do a Webapp pentest.
● The only difference was that the Web Server was an SAP Web
Application Server.
● Suddenly, we started discovering vulnerabilities that were not in the
apps, but in the framework itself!
● We checked online… they were not reported.
● Back then, the total number of reported SAP vulnerabilities was: 90


What “SAP Security” really is
● SAP security is a complex discipline, that must be addressed holistically!
● SoD controls are necessary, but they are not enough.
● They only address one of the layers where security must be enforced.

● The forgotten layer: The Business Infrastructure (NetWeaver/Basis).
● Base framework in charge of critical tasks such as authentication,
authorization, encryption, interfaces, audit, logging, etc.
● Can be susceptible of security vulnerabilities that, if exploited, can
lead to espionage, sabotage and fraud attacks to the business
information.


A different (higher) risk profile
● Exploitation of a SoD weakness:
1. The attacker needs a valid user account in the target SAP system.
2. He needs to find out that he has more access than he should have.
3. Common auditing features may detect his activities.

● Exploitation of a technical/infrastructure weakness:
1. The attacker does not need a valid user account in the target SAP
system.
2. A successful attack will allow him to achieve SAP_ALL
privileges (even without having a real user!).
3. Common auditing features would not detect his activities.

Cyber-attacks on SAP Systems
Cyber-Attacks to SAP Systems www.onapsis.com – © 2012 Onapsis , Inc. – All rights reserved 11

A Rising Threat
● The number of SAP Security Notes has increased dramatically over the last
years.
● Security Notes usually address one or more vulnerabilities.
● Most of these issues affect the Business Runtime.

Number of SAP Security Notes per Year

Cyber-attacks to
Cyber-Attacks Web Applications www.onapsis.com – © 2012 Onapsis , Inc. – All rights reserved 12

External and
Internal Threats


Querying search engines
● While most SAP systems were only reachable internally a decade ago,
now it’s common for SAP systems to be connected to the Internet.

● Attackers know how to find them using regular search engines.


But… is it more than just Web apps?
● Even if companies believe they are not online, many of them are!
● When you acquire SAP, the agreement specifies that you have to allow
remote access through a special component called SAProuter.

● Network services such as the Dispatcher, Gateway, Management
Console, Message Server, P4 interface, etc. should never touch the
Internet…

● What’s the reality?


- From the Trenches -
The Current Security
Level of SAP
Implementations


From the trenches
● Since 2005, our experts were engaged to perform numerous SAP
Penetration Tests, including some of the largest organizations of the
world.
● We have evaluated 550+ SAP Application Servers in total.

● A typical project:
● Network access to the end-user network.
● List of IP addresses of SAP servers.
● NO user/password credentials.


From the trenches
● Our findings:
● Over 95% of the systems were exposed to espionage, sabotage
and fraud attacks. A malicious party would have been able to achieve
SAP_ALL or equivalent privileges without having access credentials.
● Only 5% of the evaluated SAP systems had the proper security
audit logging features enabled.
● None of the evaluated SAP systems were fully updated with the
latest SAP security patches.
● In most cases, the attack vectors that leaded to the initial
compromise comprised the exploitation of vulnerabilities that have
been in the public domain for more than 5 years.


The TOP-11
vulnerabilities affecting
the SAP infrastructure


BIZEC.org, the business application security initiative
● BIZEC.org is a non-profit organization focused on security threats affecting
ERP systems and business-critical infrastructure.

● The BIZEC TEC/11 project lists the most common and most critical security
defects and threats affecting the Business Runtime layer/infrastructure of SAP
platforms.


BIZEC TEC-01: Vulnerable Software in Use

Risk
The SAP platform is running based on technological frameworks whose
versions are affected by reported security vulnerabilities and the
respective fixes have not been applied.

Business Impact

Attackers would be able to exploit reported security vulnerabilities and
perform unauthorized activities over the business information processed
by the affected SAP system.


BIZEC TEC-02: Standard Users with Default Passwords

Risk
Users created automatically during the SAP system installation, or other
standard procedures, are configured with default, publicly known
passwords.

Business Impact

Attackers would be able to login to the affected SAP system using a
standard SAP user account. As these accounts are usually highly
privileged, the business information would be exposed espionage,
sabotage and fraud attacks.


BIZEC TEC-03: Unsecured SAP Gateway

Risk
The SAP Application Server’s Gateway is not restricting the starting,
registration or cancellation of external RFC servers.

Business Impact
Attackers would be able to obtain full control of the SAP system.
Furthermore, they would be able to intercept and manipulate interfaces
used for transmitting sensitive business information.


BIZEC TEC-04: Unsecured SAP/Oracle authentication

Risk
The SAP ABAP Application Server authenticates to the Oracle database
through the OPS$ mechanism, and the Oracle’s listener has not been
secured.

Business Impact
Attackers would be able to obtain full control of the affected SAP system’s
database, enabling them to create, visualize, modify and/or delete any
business information processed by the system.


BIZEC TEC-05: Insecure RFC interfaces

Risk
The SAP environment is using insecure RFC connections from systems of
lower security-classification level to systems with higher security-
classification levels.

Business Impact
Attackers would be able to perform RFC pivoting attacks, by first
compromising an SAP system with low security-classification and,
subsequently, abusing insecure interfaces to compromise SAP systems
with higher security-classification levels.


BIZEC TEC-06: Insufficient Security Audit Logging

Risk
The SAP System’s auditing features are disabled or not properly
configured.

Business Impact
It would not be possible to detect suspicious activities or attacks against
the SAP system. Furthermore, valuable information for forensic
investigations would not be available.


BIZEC TEC-07: Unsecured SAP Message Server

Risk
The SAP System’s Message Server is not restricting the registration of
SAP Application Servers.

Business Impact
Attackers would be able to register malicious SAP Application Servers
and perform man-in-the-middle attacks, being able to obtain valid user
access credentials and sensitive business information. Attacks against
user workstations would also be possible.


BIZEC TEC-08: Dangerous SAP Web Applications

Risk
The SAP Application Server is allowing access to Web applications with
reported security vulnerabilities or sensitive functionality.

Business Impact
Attackers would be able to exploit vulnerabilities in such Web
applications, enabling them to perform unauthorized activities over the
business information processed by the affected SAP system.


BIZEC TEC-09: Unprotected Access to Administration Services

Risk
The SAP Application Server is not restricting access to sensitive
administration or monitoring services.

Business Impact
Attackers would be able to access administration or monitoring services
and perform unauthorized activities over the affected SAP systems,
possibly leading to espionage and/or sabotage attacks.


BIZEC TEC-10: Insecure Network Environment

Risk
The network environment of the SAP platform is not properly secured
through the deployment and configuration of network firewalls,
specialized Intrusion Prevention and Detection systems and application-
layer gateways.

Business Impact
Attackers would be able to access sensitive SAP network services and
possibly exploit vulnerabilities and unsafe configurations in them, leading
to the execution of unauthorized activities over the affected SAP platform.


BIZEC TEC-11: Unencrypted Communications

Risk
The confidentiality and integrity of communications in the SAP landscape
is not enforced. These communications comprise SAP-to-SAP
connections as well as interactions between SAP servers and external
systems, such as user workstations and third-party systems.

Business Impact
Attackers would be able to access sensitive technical and business
information being transferred to/from the SAP environment.


Defending the SAP Platform


The Challenges
● Knowledge. Understanding how to assess and secure an SAP system
requires specialized knowledge.

● Scope. The entire platform must be secured. This comprises:
● Every Landscape (ERP, CRM, SCM, …) in the organization
● Every SAP system in each landscape
● Every Client (mandant) and AS in each system
● Every of the 1500+ configuration parameters of each AS

● Periodicity. The security of the SAP infrastructure must be evaluated
periodically, at least after each SAP Security Patch Day, to verify whether
new risks have been raised and evaluate mitigation actions.


SAP Security - Who is responsible?
● Unlike other systems (such as Web servers, domain controllers, etc.),
the security of SAP systems usually falls under the domain of “The
Business”.

● This means that the officers in charge of securing the systems are the
same ones who are responsible for verifying whether they are secure or
not.  FAIL.

● If the organization's SAP teams are responsible for protecting the
SAP platform, the Information Security Manager / CISO department
must verify whether the current security level matches the
organization's defined risk appetite.


SAP Security - Who is responsible?
Let’s think about it:

● Is the SAP platform a “blackbox” for the Information Security team?

● Does the Information Security team “trust but verify”?

● Who will be ultimately responsible if there is a security breach in the
SAP platform?

● What if the SAP platform is compromised, not by a high-profile and
complex attack, but rather as the result of the exploitation of a
vulnerability that has been publicly known for several years?


Conclusions


Conclusions
● Segregation of Duties controls are necessary, but not enough!
● The SAP infrastructure can be exposed to technical security
vulnerabilities that, if exploited, would enable espionage, sabotage and
financial fraud attacks.
● The risk level in this matter is higher, as attackers do not even need a
user account in the system!
● The number of SAP security notes have dramatically increased over the
last years. Customers are not catching-up.
● Many companies state that “our SAP system has not been hacked”, but
they do not even have the basic auditing features enabled!


Conclusions
● Many SAP systems are connected to the Internet, and exposing
sensitive services beyond Web applications. Furthermore, the internal
network is usually not properly segmented.

● SAP is taking important steps into increasing the security of its
customers’ systems (security guides, regular patches, new standards).

● While “The Business” may work on the security of the platform, it’s the
responsibility of Information Security to verify that they are doing their job.

● If our business-critical infrastructure is hacked by a 5-year-old
vulnerability, we are clearly doing something wrong.


Questions?
mnunez@onapsis.com
@marianonunezdc


Thank you!

www.onapsis.com
Follow us! @onapsis


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