CVE-2024-22021 is a security vulnerability identified in Veeam Recovery Orchestrator version 6. This product is designed to automate and orchestrate disaster recovery plans, enabling organizations to manage recovery workflows efficiently. The vulnerability allows a user assigned a low-privileged role, specifically the 'Plan Author' role, to access recovery plans that belong to a different Scope than the one they are authorized for. In Veeam Recovery Orchestrator, Scopes are used to segregate access and control over different sets of recovery plans, ensuring that users can only view and manage plans within their assigned boundaries. The flaw corresponds to CWE-285, which relates to improper authorization. The CVSS 3.0 score for this vulnerability is 6.5 (medium severity), with the vector indicating network attack vector (AV:N), low attack complexity (AC:L), requiring low privileges (PR:L), no user interaction (UI:N), unchanged scope (S:U), high confidentiality impact (C:H), no integrity impact (I:N), and no availability impact (A:N). This means an attacker with legitimate low-level access can remotely exploit this vulnerability without additional user interaction to gain unauthorized read access to sensitive recovery plans outside their assigned scope. Although no known exploits are currently reported in the wild, the vulnerability poses a risk of information disclosure, potentially exposing sensitive disaster recovery configurations and strategies that could be leveraged for further attacks or reconnaissance. Since the vulnerability does not affect integrity or availability, the main concern is unauthorized confidentiality breach of recovery plans.

For European organizations, this vulnerability could lead to unauthorized disclosure of sensitive disaster recovery plans, which often contain critical information about infrastructure, backup strategies, and recovery procedures. Exposure of such information could aid threat actors in planning targeted attacks, including ransomware or sabotage, by understanding recovery capabilities and weaknesses. Organizations in sectors with stringent data protection regulations, such as finance, healthcare, and critical infrastructure, could face compliance risks if sensitive information is leaked. Additionally, unauthorized access to recovery plans could undermine trust in the organization's ability to secure its disaster recovery processes. While the vulnerability does not allow modification or disruption of recovery plans, the confidentiality breach alone can have significant operational and reputational consequences.

To mitigate this vulnerability, organizations should: 1) Apply any patches or updates provided by Veeam as soon as they become available, even though no patch links are currently listed, monitoring official Veeam advisories is critical. 2) Review and tighten role-based access controls within Veeam Recovery Orchestrator, ensuring that users are assigned the minimum necessary privileges and that Plan Author roles are strictly limited to appropriate scopes. 3) Implement network segmentation and access restrictions to limit exposure of the Recovery Orchestrator interface to trusted networks and users only. 4) Conduct regular audits of user access and recovery plan visibility to detect any unauthorized access attempts or anomalies. 5) Employ monitoring and alerting on access to recovery plans, especially for users with low privileges, to quickly identify potential exploitation attempts. 6) Educate administrators and users about the sensitivity of recovery plans and the importance of adhering to access policies. These steps go beyond generic advice by focusing on access control hygiene, proactive monitoring, and network-level protections tailored to the specific nature of this vulnerability.