CVE-2024-45655 is a medium-severity vulnerability identified in IBM Application Gateway versions 19.12 through 24.09. The root cause is an incorrect permission assignment (CWE-732) on critical resources within the application gateway. This misconfiguration allows a local user with some level of privilege (local privileged user) to perform unauthorized actions that they should not be able to execute. The vulnerability does not require user interaction and has a CVSS 3.1 base score of 5.5, indicating a moderate risk. The attack vector is local (AV:L), meaning the attacker must have local access to the affected system. The attack complexity is low (AC:L), and the attacker must have privileges (PR:L), but no user interaction (UI:N) is needed. The impact affects the integrity (I:H) of the system but does not affect confidentiality (C:N) or availability (A:N). This suggests that an attacker could modify or manipulate critical components or configurations of the IBM Application Gateway, potentially leading to unauthorized changes that could undermine the security posture or operational correctness of the gateway. Since the vulnerability is related to permission misconfiguration, it could allow privilege escalation or unauthorized configuration changes by users who already have some level of local access but are not supposed to have full control. No known exploits are reported in the wild yet, and no patches are currently linked, so organizations should monitor IBM advisories for updates. The vulnerability affects a widely used enterprise-grade application gateway product, which is often deployed in environments requiring secure application delivery and traffic management.

For European organizations, the impact of this vulnerability could be significant, especially for those relying on IBM Application Gateway to secure and manage critical web applications and services. Unauthorized modification of gateway configurations or components could lead to weakened security controls, potentially allowing attackers to bypass security policies, redirect traffic, or introduce malicious payloads. This could result in data integrity issues, compliance violations (e.g., GDPR), and operational disruptions. Since the vulnerability requires local privileged access, the primary risk vector is insider threats or attackers who have already compromised internal systems. In regulated industries such as finance, healthcare, and government sectors prevalent in Europe, the integrity compromise could lead to severe reputational damage and regulatory penalties. Additionally, the lack of confidentiality and availability impact reduces the risk of data leakage or denial of service directly from this vulnerability, but the integrity impact alone is critical in environments where trustworthiness of traffic and configurations is paramount.

European organizations should implement the following specific mitigations: 1) Restrict and tightly control local privileged access to servers running IBM Application Gateway, ensuring only trusted administrators have such access. 2) Regularly audit and review permission settings on critical resources related to the Application Gateway to detect and correct any misconfigurations. 3) Employ host-based intrusion detection and monitoring to identify unusual local activity that could indicate exploitation attempts. 4) Isolate management interfaces and restrict access via network segmentation and strong authentication mechanisms. 5) Stay vigilant for IBM security advisories and apply patches or configuration updates promptly once available. 6) Implement strict change management and logging for configuration changes on the gateway to quickly detect unauthorized modifications. 7) Conduct internal penetration testing and vulnerability assessments focusing on local privilege escalation paths to identify and remediate similar permission issues proactively.