Software Engineering Institute

Lotus Notes allows users to associate objects with documents in a database. While these objects appear to be a part of the document, they are actually stored as separate files. Access to the documents and objects are controlled by the database ACL, however, the use of the Reader and Author lists can further restrict access to individual documents . The Reader and Author lists modify access only to the documents themselves and not to associated objects. Therefore an intruder who does not have access to a document, because of permissions set by the Reader and Author lists, can still access the objects associated with that document. Using Notes API calls an intruder can directly open the desired object if the Notes unique document ID of that object is known. The intruder must be able to access the target database in order to exploit this vulnerability. Lotus has released a Tech Note to address this problem.

An intruder can view objects that they do not have permission to view.

Upgrade to Notes/Domino R5.0.10.

A workaround is to use document encryption to protect rich text fields that contain attachments. Documents can be encrypted using either public encryption keys (for example, the keys of the users listed in the reader names field) or using secret encryption keys.