Graphics chipmaker Nvidia took a customer service website offline Wednesday following a public report of a vulnerability in its SAP-powered backend.
The affected website, https://nvcare.nvidia.com, uses SAP's NetWeaver, which is a framework that underpins many SAP business applications. The NetWeaver vulnerability is close to three years old and has been patched by SAP, but it appears Nvidia didn't apply the fix.
The finder of the vulnerability is simply listed as a person going by the nickname "Finger," based in China. According to the bug report, Finger notified Nvidia on Nov. 21. The status of the bug is listed as "unable to contact the vendor or actively neglected by the vendor" and notes that it was publicly released on Jan. 5.
Nvidia said in a statement it learned of the issue on Wednesday and shut the site down until it is fixed.
"At this point, we have no evidence that customer data was compromised," wrote Bob Sherbin of Nvidia's corporate communications, in an email. "We are continuing to investigate the matter.
The report was posted on a Chinese vulnerability forum, WooYun.org, and reposted on Full Disclosure, a widely read vulnerability forum.
The vulnerability would allow an unauthenticated hacker to remotely take full control of the SAP NetWeaver portal platform, said Mariano Nunez, CEO of Onapsis, a Boston-based company that specializes in SAP security.
"This includes the ability to create an attacker-controlled administrator user, execute operating systems commands and take the entire system offline," he said via email. "Many SAP NetWeaver Portal systems are directly connected to the Internet. This means anyone from a foreign country can remotely exploit this issue."
Once NetWeaver is compromised, an attacker could then get access to ERP, CRM, supply chain or business intelligence systems, Nunez said.
SAP has undertaken a campaign to improve the security of its products over the past few years. But security researchers note that many of its customers fail to maintain the software, which exposes them to attacks that could compromise confidential information.
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