Use of Hard-coded Cryptographic Key in the PostgreSQL Sidecar Service in Splunk Enterprise

Overview

In Splunk Enterprise versions below 10.4.4 and 10.2.8, a user who does not hold the "admin" or "power" Splunk roles could derive the PostgreSQL sidecar database superuser password and run arbitrary operating system commands as the user account running Splunk Enterprise on search head cluster members. The vulnerability is possible because the PostgreSQL sidecar service derives a privileged database password from the search head cluster identifier that appears in search job logs. For more information see About configuring role-based user access (https://help.splunk.com/en/splunk-enterprise/administer/manage-users-and-security/10.2/manage-splunk-platform-users-and-roles/about-configuring-role-based-user-access), server.conf (https://help.splunk.com/en/splunk-enterprise/administer/admin-manual/10.2/configuration-file-reference/10.2.0-configuration-file-reference/server.conf), and Sidecar configuration settings (https://help.splunk.com/en/splunk-enterprise/administer/admin-manual/10.4/splunk-sidecars/sidecar-configuration-settings) in the Splunk documentation.

Affected

• enterprise >= 10.4 < 10.4.4
• enterprise >= 10.2 < 10.2.8

Remediation

Upgrade Splunk Enterprise to versions 10.4.4, 10.2.8, 10.0.11, and 9.4.16 or higher.

Workarounds

If you cannot immediately upgrade to a fixed version, turn off the PostgreSQL sidecar service. Add the following stanza in the server.conf configuration file: [postgres] disabled = true. Restart Splunk Enterprise for the change to take effect. Do not apply this workaround if you use Edge Processor, OpAmp, or SPL2 data pipelines on the instance. Turning off PostgreSQL breaks these features and can cascade to dependent sidecar processes. Core search, indexing, and dashboard functionality are not affected. For more information see Sidecar configuration settings in the Splunk documentation.