Four Common SAP Vulnerabilities Putting Your Sensitive Data at Risk

SAP applications are sophisticated software solutions tailored to meet the unique requirements of each customer’s business processes and data needs. As a result, managing the security of SAP applications can be equally complex, and security processes must be customized to address specific vulnerabilities and weaknesses in each customer’s system. SAP systems are highly susceptible to security threats that result from overlooked user access vulnerabilities, system misconfigurations, and unsecured ABAP code. Detecting such threats can be a time-consuming process that requires manually scanning countless lines of ABAP code for vulnerabilities and continuously parsing user change logs for access anomalies. As a result, overworked security teams can easily overlook threats that arise from the following SAP vulnerabilities.

Hidden OK Codes

Hidden OK Codes can significantly compromise SAP security. They work by defining specific action values that trigger hidden SAP program actions, effectively sidestepping standard access controls. In addition, hackers leveraging this exploit can access and edit vendor payment information because hidden routines bypass authorization checks, meaning the hacker’s changes are often undetected by routine monitoring and auditing processes. This can lead to unauthorized access to sensitive data, manipulation of critical processes, and substantial financial fraud.

RFC Callback Exploits

A successful RFC Callback Attack can expose your systems to unauthorized access, data theft, financial loss, and more. Specifically, an unauthorized user created by the attacker can access the target system and conduct activities that might compromise system security and data integrity, often unnoticed by authorized personnel.

The extent of the attack depends on the privileges of the initial outbound call initiator; an attacker could perform virtually anything if the initiator has system-wide access with SAP_ALL permissions. Even without such broad access, an attacker can still cause significant damage by accessing sensitive data, introducing malware, or unlawfully diverting funds.

Password Cracking Exploits

Hackers can gain unauthorized access to sensitive information by cracking the password of a high-privilege SAP user. Organizations are at risk of such attacks due to manual security processes and a lack of proactive measures to detect anomalies in user access and breaches caused by compromised credentials. This can lead to significant data loss as organizations may not identify breaches in a timely manner. Solutions like SAP Enterprise Threat Detection (SAP ETD) do not have a change log to track such exploits, making it hard to identify unauthorized access by hackers.

Authorization Buffer Exploits

By exploiting vulnerable ABAP code and executing a custom, malicious ABAP program, hackers can overwrite the authorization buffer and obfuscate any user authorization changes from being tracked in the SAP system’s user maintenance database. This allows hackers to grant unauthorized users SAP_ALL permissions to view and alter critical master data without being detected by system administrators. Once an attacker bypasses the authorization buffer and enters your SAP systems, they can perform numerous nefarious activities.

How Pathlock Protects Your Sensitive Data from SAP Vulnerabilities

Pathlock’s Cybersecurity Application Controls (CAC) product empowers organizations to establish a multi-layered approach to SAP cybersecurity. Specifically, CAC’s preventative controls ensure robust data protection with capabilities like Dynamic Data Masking, Data Scrambling, and Data Loss Prevention. By leveraging preventative and detective controls, Pathlock enables companies to proactively harden their SAP systems while eliminating the risk of costly data exfiltration.

Pathlock empowers customers to establish a data-centric SAP cybersecurity strategy through five integrated cybersecurity modules:

• Vulnerability Management
• Code Scanning
• Transport Control
• Threat Detection and Response
• Dynamic Access Controls (DAC)

These modules allow CAC to help customers secure sensitive data while also hardening the business-critical applications that store it.

To see how Pathlock can help your organization address common SAP vulnerabilities and eliminate data exploitation and exfiltration, reach out to set up a demo today.