Description

HCL AION is affected by a vulnerability where certain application responses revealed internal server file system paths. This information could help an attacker understand the application structure and plan further attacks, potentially resulting in unintended behavior or security impact under certain conditions.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "3.1",
  "pubDate": "2026-11-06T16:18:57.907Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-11-06T16:18:57.907Z",
  "executiveSummary": "HCL AION is susceptible to an Information Disclosure vulnerability stemming from improper error handling and response management.\nThe vulnerability allows remote, unauthenticated attackers to retrieve sensitive internal server file system paths through specially crafted application requests.\nBy exposing the directory structure and installation path of the application, an attacker gains critical reconnaissance data necessary to facilitate more advanced exploitation vectors, such as local file inclusion (LFI) or targeted path traversal attacks.\nThis information leakage undermines security through obscurity and aids in mapping the backend infrastructure, which could lead to unauthorized system modification or further unintended application behavior.\nThe risk is primarily classified as an information exposure flaw, requiring no specialized privileges to trigger; attackers can leverage these responses to identify target-specific files or configuration locations, effectively reducing the effort required for subsequent attack stages.",
  "technicalDetails": "The root cause of this vulnerability lies in the improper sanitization and handling of exception messages or diagnostic responses generated by the HCL AION application. When the application encounters specific runtime errors or invalid inputs, the internal exception handling mechanism fails to abstract the underlying server environment, resulting in the reflection of full file system paths within the HTTP response body.\nThe attack flow begins when an attacker sends a malformed request, such as a request containing illegal characters, unexpected parameter types, or non-existent endpoint identifiers, to the HCL AION interface. In response to these malformed requests, the application processes the input through its internal logic, triggering an unhandled exception or a verbose diagnostic state.\nBecause the application framework does not enforce strict response filtering, the server leaks the absolute file path, such as 'C:\\\\Program Files\\\\HCL\\\\AION\\\\...' or equivalent Linux-based structural paths, back to the client. This leakage identifies the application's root directory, installed modules, and potentially the underlying operating system's organizational hierarchy.\nFrom an exploitation perspective, this information is highly valuable for reconnaissance. Once an attacker obtains the server path, they can correlate this data with known directory structures for HCL AION to identify configuration files, log directories, or sensitive runtime resources that are typically hidden from public view. This information significantly decreases the 'unknown' variables in an attacker's threat model.\nThis vulnerability is accessible via the network layer without the need for prior authentication or elevated privileges. The exposure acts as a passive reconnaissance tool, enabling the attacker to map the backend environment before attempting more aggressive exploits, such as exploiting path traversal vulnerabilities to access sensitive configuration files like 'web.config' or 'settings.json' based on the confirmed directory structure.\nThere is no indication that this vulnerability allows for remote code execution (RCE) in isolation; however, it functions as a critical force multiplier for other vulnerabilities by eliminating the need for directory brute-forcing or blind guessing, thereby increasing the probability of successful downstream exploitation."
}