Missing System x Flash Memory Write Protection Lock Bit

A write protection lock bit was left unset after boot on an older generation of Lenovo and IBM System x servers, potentially allowing an attacker with administrator access to modify the subset of flash memory containing Intel Server Platform Services (SPS) and the system Flash Descriptors.

The IMM2 First Failure Data Capture function collects management module logs and diagnostic information when a hardware error is detected. This information is made available for download through an SFTP server hosted on the IMM2 management network interface. In versions earlier than 4.90 for Lenovo System x and earlier than 6.80 for IBM System x, the credentials to access the SFTP server are hard-coded and described in the IMM2 documentation, allowing an attacker with management network access to obtain the collected FFDC data. After applying the update, the IMM2 will create random SFTP credentials for use with OneCLI.

A stack overflow vulnerability was discovered within the web administration service in Integrated Management Module 2 (IMM2) earlier than version 4.70 used in some Lenovo servers and earlier than version 6.60 used in some IBM servers. An attacker providing a crafted user ID and password combination can cause a portion of the authentication routine to overflow its stack, resulting in stack corruption.

An unprivileged attacker with connectivity to the IMM2 could cause a denial of service attack on the IMM2 (Versions earlier than 4.4 for Lenovo System x and earlier than 6.4 for IBM System x). Flooding the IMM2 with a high volume of authentication failures via the Common Information Model (CIM) used by LXCA and OneCLI and other tools can exhaust available system memory which can cause the IMM2 to reboot itself until the requests cease.

In Enterprise Networking Operating System (ENOS) in Lenovo and IBM RackSwitch and BladeCenter products, an authentication bypass known as "HP Backdoor" was discovered during a Lenovo security audit in the serial console, Telnet, SSH, and Web interfaces. This bypass mechanism can be accessed when performing local authentication under specific circumstances. If exploited, admin-level access to the switch is granted.