IBM Websphere MQ
Researcher: Martyn Ruks and Alex Plaskett
Date Started: Jan 01, 2007
IBM's WebSphere MQ is a widely used and respected middleware application for handling messaging within an enterprise network. Its popularity and level of adoption arises from its robustness, scalability, functionality and compatibility with a wide range of platforms and applications. Whilst the software has a large number of security features the complexity of the environments within which it operates often results in it being poorly configured. This environmental complexity and the richness of the product's feature set can make it an attractive target to attackers. In an era when "front-end" web applications and "back-end" databases are subject to increasingly intensive security testing the weakest link in an application can now often be found in the middleware.
The project has focused on identifying vulnerabilities in the Queue Manager that can be exploited across a network. Another key objective was to research and document a methodology for testing installations of the software.
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