Subject: Security Advisory (BEA08-183.00)
From: BEA Systems Inc.
Minor Subject: Security policies on a WebLogic Portal Page can inadvertently be lost by an administrator performing certain editing operations on that page
Product(s) Affected: WebLogic Portal

Threat level: Low
In certain circumstances, an administrator’s actions might remove security restrictions on some pages.

Severity: Medium
Users of the system may be able to see pages they were not intended to.

A problem was identified that could potentially cause a security vulnerability in certain versions of WebLogic Portal. Procedures are available to correct this problem (see Section II). BEA Systems treats potential security problems with a high degree of urgency and endeavors to take appropriate steps to help ensure the security of our customers’ systems. As a result, BEA Systems strongly suggests the following actions:

I. Read the following advisory.
II. Apply the suggested action.
III. If you know of any additional users interested in future security advisories, please forward them the registration instructions included in this advisory.

I. Advisory

An authenticated portal administrator using the portal Admin Tools can inadvertently remove the entitlements on pages by editing the page definition label for a given page. This can result in the removal of any entitlement policies that were in place on that page without the Administrator being aware they were removed. This can result in users of the system being able to see pages they were not intended to.

This advisory corrects this issue by recommending procedures to avoid this issue.

Impact and CVSS Ratings:

CVSS Severity Score: 2.1 (Low)
Attack Range (AV): Network
Attack Complexity (AC): High
Authentication Level (Au): Single Instance
Impact Type: Partial Confidentiality
Vulnerability Type: Information Disclosure
CVSS Base Score Vector: (AV:N/AC:H/Au:S/C:P/I:N/A:N)

Complete CVSS Guide: http://www.first.org/cvss/cvss-guide.html
Online Calculator: http://nvd.nist.gov/cvss.cfm?calculator&version=2

The following versions of WebLogic Portal are affected by this vulnerability

• WebLogic Portal 8.1 Service Pack 3 through Service Pack 6, on all platforms.

II. SUGGESTED ACTION

BEA Systems strongly recommends the following course of actions.

WebLogic Portal 8.1 SP3-SP6

Follow the recommendations in the WLP Security Guide for this issue located at:

http://edocs.bea.com/wlp/docs81/security/security.html#1013232

BEA strongly suggests that customers apply the remedies recommended in all our security advisories. BEA also urges customers to apply every Service Pack as they are released. Service Packs include a roll-up of all bug fixes for each version of the product, as well as each of the prior Service Packs. Service Packs and information about them can be found at:

Note: Information about securing WebLogic Server can be found at http://edocs.bea.com/wls/docs100/lockdown/intro.html. Information about securing WebLogic Portal can be found at http://edocs.bea.com/wlp/docs100/security/lockdown.html. We strongly encourage you to review this documentation to ensure your server deployment is securely configured.

III. FUTURE SECURITY COMMUNICATIONS

If there are security-related issues with BEA product, BEA Systems generally distributes an advisory and instructions with a recommended course of action. Because the security of your site, data, and code is a high priority, we are committed to generally communicating security-related issues to our customers and partners.

All previous advisories and notifications can be viewed at http://dev2dev.bea.com/advisories/.

BEA Systems has established an opt-in emailing list specifically targeted for product security advisories and notifications. As a policy, if a user has opted-in to our emailing list and there is a relevant security issue with the BEA product(s) he/she is using, BEA generally distributes an advisory and instructions via email with a recommended course of action.

ADDITIONAL USERS WHO WISH TO REGISTER FOR ADVISORY DISTRIBUTION SHOULD FOLLOW THE REGISTRATION DIRECTIONS AT http://dev2dev.bea.com/advisories.

IV. REPORTING SECURITY ISSUES

Security issues can be reported to BEA Systems by sending email to secalert@bea.com or by following the directions at http://dev2dev.bea.com/advisories. If BEA has validated a reported security issue, we will endeavor to assess the severity of the impact of the security issue and the likelihood of the exploitation of the vulnerability. Based on these assessments and other factors, BEA will endeavor to develop and appropriately prioritize a workaround or patch designed to reduce or eliminate the risk of the vulnerability.

If you have any questions or care to verify the authenticity of this advisory, please contact BEA Technical Support at support@bea.com.

Thank you,
BEA Systems, Inc.