Description

IBM Guardium Data Protection 12.2 is affected by a command injection vulnerability in the GIM bundle import functionality. An authenticated attacker can provide a crafted GIM bundle that causes attacker-controlled arguments to be passed to the tar command, resulting in arbitrary command execution with elevated privileges on the Central Manager.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "8.8",
  "pubDate": "2026-09-25T14:17:20.193Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-09-25T14:17:20.193Z",
  "executiveSummary": "IBM Guardium Data Protection 12.2 is susceptible to a command injection vulnerability located within the GIM (Guardium Installation Manager) bundle import functionality. This vulnerability allows an authenticated attacker to execute arbitrary commands on the underlying operating system of the Central Manager with elevated privileges.\nThe flaw stems from improper neutralization of user-supplied input when processing GIM bundles, which are subsequently passed to the system's tar utility. By crafting a malicious GIM bundle, an attacker can manipulate command-line arguments to trigger code execution.\nThe risk implication is critical, as successful exploitation results in a full compromise of the Central Manager. The attack requires the adversary to possess authenticated access to the system. Once authenticated, the attacker can leverage the GIM interface to inject commands that operate with the privilege level of the application's execution context, potentially leading to unauthorized data access, system configuration changes, or the installation of persistent malicious backdoors. The lack of input sanitization during the bundle decompression phase serves as the primary vector for this security failure.",
  "technicalDetails": "The vulnerability resides within the GIM bundle import subsystem of IBM Guardium Data Protection 12.2. The root cause of the command injection is an insecure implementation of the bundle extraction process, where the application interface fails to properly sanitize or validate the file structure and metadata contained within a GIM bundle before passing them to the system-level tar command.\nSpecifically, when an authenticated user uploads a GIM bundle, the system executes an archive extraction procedure. The application incorrectly treats the contents of the bundle as trusted input, concatenating these values directly into the arguments of a shell command invoked via the system's tar utility. Because the tar command supports various command-line flags and options that can be exploited for arbitrary file operations or command execution, an attacker can construct a GIM bundle containing filenames or archive entries specifically crafted to be interpreted as command-line arguments rather than legitimate data files.\nThe attack flow follows a structured sequence: First, the attacker creates a malicious GIM bundle containing specifically named files or symbolic links that trigger unintended command-line switches within the tar execution context. Second, the attacker uploads this crafted archive via the administrative interface of the Central Manager, authenticating as a valid user. Third, upon initiating the import or installation process, the application triggers the vulnerable backend script which invokes tar to process the archive. Fourth, the malicious arguments are parsed by the shell executing the command, resulting in the injection and subsequent execution of arbitrary shell commands.\nGiven that the GIM service operates with elevated privileges on the Central Manager, the resulting command execution occurs with the same level of authority, allowing the attacker to bypass standard file system permissions and security constraints. The impact of this post-exploitation behavior includes the potential for lateral movement, full administrative control over the appliance, and the exfiltration of sensitive monitoring data or configuration secrets. The vulnerability is fundamentally a failure in input validation where user-controlled archive headers influence the behavior of a system binary, effectively granting the attacker the ability to escape the expected functional constraints of the GIM service."
}