Phreaking Vulnerability: Exploiting HCL Legacy IVR Systems for Unauthorized Service Activations

CVE-2018-11518 · MEDIUM Severity

AV:N/AC:M/AU:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

A vulnerability allows a phreaking attack on HCL legacy IVR systems that do not use VoIP. These IVR systems rely on various frequencies of audio signals; based on the frequency, certain commands and functions are processed. Since these frequencies are accepted within a phone call, an attacker can record these frequencies and use them for service activations. This is a request-forgery issue when the required series of DTMF signals for a service activation is predictable (e.g., the IVR system does not speak a nonce to the caller). In this case, the IVR system accepts an activation request from a less-secure channel (any loudspeaker in the caller's physical environment) without verifying that the request was intended (it matches a nonce sent over a more-secure channel to the caller's earpiece).

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