GeoNetwork: ACL bypass on Elasticsearch search when request body omits query field

Summary

GeoNetwork is a catalog application to manage spatially referenced resources. From 4.0.0-alpha.1 until 4.2.16 and 4.4.11, the Elasticsearch-backed search proxy can skip GeoNetwork's access-control filter injection when a client request has an omitted query field. The request is then forwarded to Elasticsearch without group visibility, draft exclusion, record ownership, or portal-specific filtering. An unauthenticated remote attacker can use the affected public search API to retrieve the full indexed contents of metadata records that should not be publicly visible. This issue is fixed in versions 4.2.16 and 4.4.11.

Remediation

1. Inventory every geonetwork core-geonetwork deployment, including staging.
2. No fixed version appears in the public sources yet. Check the references below and the vendor directly.

References

• Referencehttps://github.com/geonetwork/core-geonetwork/security/advisories/GHSA-582q-v28r-7cxr
• Referencehttps://github.com/geonetwork/core-geonetwork/commit/1916412d38999f2eff68bad2dfccd69340d20f3f
• Referencehttps://github.com/geonetwork/core-geonetwork/commit/6c756c63cd1fa942f3832d99c64380c69c5e8be9
• Referencehttps://github.com/geonetwork/core-geonetwork/releases/tag/4.2.16
• Referencehttps://github.com/geonetwork/core-geonetwork/releases/tag/4.4.11