Improper authentication (CWE-287) in the OAuth token endpoint in Cloud Foundry UAA allows a remote, authenticated attacker holding a valid user access token to obtain a fully-privileged client_credentials token for the OAuth client that …

Overview

Improper authentication (CWE-287) in the OAuth token endpoint in Cloud Foundry UAA allows a remote, authenticated attacker holding a valid user access token to obtain a fully-privileged client_credentials token for the OAuth client that issued it, by presenting the user token as an OAuth 2.0 Bearer credential on a client_credentials grant request in place of the client’s configured secret.

UAA’s client_credentials handling does not verify that the Bearer credential supplied for client authentication is actually a client credential (a client secret or a valid configured client authentication method); it accepts any valid access token whose client_id matches the request. A token obtained by a normal end user through a public authorization_code + PKCE flow — scoped only to uaa.user, carrying a user_id, and recording client_auth_method=none — satisfies this check. That user token cannot itself administer OAuth clients (POST /oauth/clients correctly returns 403), but when replayed as Bearer authentication on a client_credentials request for the same client, UAA issues a new client-only token carrying the client’s full authorities, such as clients.write. An attacker can use that token to create arbitrary new OAuth clients, including clients with attacker-chosen authorities, without ever possessing the client’s actual secret.

Exploitation requires a valid user access token (the attacker’s own) for a client that is configured to support both a public, user-facing authorization flow and the client_credentials grant type on the same client_id — a non-default combination. Practical impact scales with the authorities assigned to that client.

Remediation

Refer to the linked advisories for vendor-supplied fixes and affected version ranges.