Software Engineering Institute

webMathematica provides a way to offer access to Mathematica applications via a web browser interface. For example, one can deploy calculators, problem solvers, and other types of interactive content over the web.

By sending a specially crafted request to a web server running webMathematica, an attacker can view arbitrary files on the system. In order for the attack to be successful, the attacker must use the absolute pathname of the file being read. Vulnerable versions of webMathematica include 1.0.0 and 1.0.0.1.

An attacker can view arbitrary files on the vulnerable host. As a result of viewing these files, an attacker may be able to gain additional access to the system (some of these files may be password files or other types of sensitive data).

Replace your MSP servlet with a new one, available from http://support.wolfram.com/webmathematica/security/fileaccess.html. Please note that If you run webMathematica from Apache JServ, then you will need to update your images.class servlet as well. Wolfram Research is currently testing and validating a fixed version of the images.class servlet.