CVE-2024-20924 is a high-severity vulnerability affecting Oracle Audit Vault and Database Firewall versions 20.1 through 20.9. This vulnerability resides in the Firewall component of the product and can be exploited by a high-privileged attacker who has network access via Oracle Net. The attack complexity is high, requiring user interaction from a person other than the attacker, which means social engineering or tricking a legitimate user is necessary to trigger the exploit. The vulnerability allows an attacker to compromise Oracle Audit Vault and Database Firewall, potentially resulting in a full takeover of these systems. Furthermore, the vulnerability has scope change implications, meaning that successful exploitation could impact additional Oracle products beyond the initially affected components. The CVSS 3.1 base score of 7.6 reflects significant impacts on confidentiality, integrity, and availability, with the vector indicating network attack vector (AV:N), high attack complexity (AC:H), high privileges required (PR:H), user interaction required (UI:R), and scope change (S:C). This vulnerability is difficult to exploit but highly impactful if successfully leveraged, potentially allowing attackers to gain control over critical security monitoring and database firewalling infrastructure, which could lead to stealthy data exfiltration, manipulation of audit logs, or disruption of database security controls. No known exploits in the wild have been reported yet, but the risk remains substantial given the critical role of the affected products in enterprise database security.

For European organizations, the impact of this vulnerability is significant due to the widespread use of Oracle database security products in sectors such as finance, government, healthcare, and critical infrastructure. Compromise of Oracle Audit Vault and Database Firewall could lead to unauthorized access to sensitive audit data, tampering with security logs, and disabling or bypassing database firewall protections. This undermines the ability to detect and prevent database attacks, increasing the risk of data breaches and regulatory non-compliance under GDPR and other data protection laws. The scope change aspect means that other Oracle products integrated with Audit Vault and Database Firewall could also be affected, potentially broadening the attack surface and impact. Given the high privileges required and the need for user interaction, insider threats or targeted social engineering campaigns are likely attack vectors, which are realistic risks in complex organizational environments. The disruption or takeover of these security products could also affect availability of critical monitoring services, impacting incident response capabilities and increasing downtime risks.

European organizations should prioritize patching affected Oracle Audit Vault and Database Firewall versions as soon as Oracle releases security updates addressing CVE-2024-20924. Until patches are available, organizations should implement strict network segmentation to limit Oracle Net access only to trusted, high-privileged users and systems. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) should be enforced for all administrative access to these products to reduce the risk of credential compromise. Monitoring for unusual user interactions or access patterns that could indicate social engineering attempts should be enhanced, including user behavior analytics and alerting on anomalous activities. Additionally, organizations should review and tighten internal policies around privileged user access and conduct targeted security awareness training to mitigate the risk of malicious or accidental user interaction that could trigger exploitation. Regular audits of Oracle Audit Vault and Database Firewall configurations and logs should be conducted to detect early signs of compromise. Finally, organizations should prepare incident response plans specifically addressing potential compromise of database security infrastructure to minimize impact if exploitation occurs.