Thousands of data centers are at risk of compromise due to a 22-year-old vulnerability in Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) management processors, data center security firm Lava reports.
Found in most server platforms, BMCs enable server management operations even without a working operating system and typically represent some of the most privileged control points in a data center.
Through a BMC, administrators can power-cycle the host, perform firmware updates, make low-level platform configuration changes, read hardware sensors, and more, using several management surfaces, including the IPMI out-of-band protocol, the Redfish HTTPS-based management API, and a web-based administrative interface.
“In many implementations, these interfaces share the same user database. A credential that works for IPMI may also work for the web interface or Redfish API. This matters because the IPMI authentication process can expose information that enables offline password recovery,” Lava notes.
According to the cybersecurity firm, nearly 37,000 internet-exposed server-management interfaces are running the IPMI protocol, and over 24,000 of them disclose password-derived authentication hashes before login.
