ERP security researchers at Onapsis have discovered five new vulnerabilities in SAP BusinessObjects and SAP HANA, three of them high-risk. One in particular gives attackers the power to overwrite data within mission-critical systems.

The three high-risk vulnerabilities are in BusinessObjects, a business intelligence suite used by organizations for complex business performance tracking and analysis. These types of intelligence tools are often wrapped up in enterprises' most important core business initiatives, containing the most sensitive data about customer behavior, pricing, financial forecasting and business processes. Very often the data directly contributes to competitive differentiation. In short, for many businesses this data is a key ingredient to their "secret sauce."

In this case, the three high-risk advisories include vulnerabilities that allow unauthenticated attackers to remotely retrieve business data, access and delete auditing information remotely and touch the system without detection, and to remotely access and overwrite business data. Additionally, Onapsis released a medium-risk advisory for BusinessObjects that allows unauthenticated read access to auditing information.

The other medium-risk advisory was for HANA, which is the next-generation database and application platform that's one of SAP's flagship cloud offerings. The flaw is a cross-site scripting vulnerability in HANA's administration tool, giving unauthenticated users the ability to access data and also potentially gain authentication credentials from legitimate users.

"An attacker who gains access to this data may use it to impersonate the user and access all information with the same rights as the target user," the advisory states. "If an administrator is impersonated, the security of the application may be fully compromised."

Specializing in SAP security research and consulting, Onapsis has released over 140 advisories like the one released today. Its researchers estimate that three-quarters of enterprise application attacks could be stopped if systems were patched for known vulnerabilities. At the same time, the average enterprise takes 18 months to patch these systems.

“Taking steps to patch these vulnerabilities, or to implement control measures is critical to protecting your SAP systems," says Ezequiel Gutesman, director of research for Onapsis. "Recent headlines alone have shown us the consequences of not having proper security measures in place, especially when you’re dealing with systems that are housing data and processing transactions vital to the ongoing success of your business."