CVE-2007-3010

What is Alcatel OmniPCX Enterprise?

Alcatel OmniPCX Enterprise is an enterprise IP telephony and unified communications platform — a corporate Private Branch Exchange (PBX) system — widely deployed in large organizations, hotels, hospitals, and government agencies throughout the 2000s and 2010s. The platform manages voice communications infrastructure including IP phones, analog extensions, voicemail, and conference calling. Alcatel-Lucent (formed by the 2006 merger of Alcatel and Lucent Technologies, later acquired by Nokia in 2016) sold and supported the OmniPCX Enterprise line for decades. The system includes a Linux-based server component with a web-based Unified Maintenance Tool for administration, which became the entry point for this critical vulnerability.

Overview

CVE-2007-3010 is a critical remote code execution vulnerability (CVSS 9.8) in Alcatel OmniPCX Enterprise. The masterCGI script in the Unified Maintenance Tool — the web-based administration interface — failed to sanitize user-supplied input before passing it to OS command execution, allowing a remote unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary commands on the PBX server. With no authentication required (CVSS: PR:N, UI:N), any network-accessible OmniPCX Enterprise server was fully exploitable. CISA added to KEV in April 2022, nearly 15 years after disclosure.

Affected Versions

The OmniPCX Enterprise line has been rebranded under Nokia following the Nokia-Alcatel-Lucent acquisition. Organizations running legacy versions should contact Nokia/Alcatel-Lucent support for patch availability.

Technical Details

The vulnerability exists in masterCGI, a CGI script exposed by the web server component of the Unified Maintenance Tool in Alcatel OmniPCX Enterprise. The Unified Maintenance Tool provided a web-based interface for PBX administrators to manage system configuration, user accounts, telephony features, and system diagnostics.

The masterCGI script accepted parameters via HTTP GET or POST requests and passed them — without sanitization — to shell commands executed on the underlying Linux system. An attacker could:

1. Send an HTTP request to the OmniPCX Enterprise web management port with crafted parameter values containing shell metacharacters (semicolons, pipes, backticks, or subshell expressions)
2. The CGI script would pass the unsanitized input to a shell command such as a system() call or shell invocation
3. The injected commands would execute on the underlying Linux operating system with the privileges of the web server process

Since the OmniPCX Enterprise runs a full Linux environment managing telephony infrastructure, a compromised PBX server provides access to:

• Internal VoIP communications (interception capability)
• Internal network access (the PBX is often placed on a trusted internal segment with broad network access)
• Voicemail systems containing sensitive audio recordings
• Integration with corporate directory services and HR systems

Discovery

Discovered by external security researchers and disclosed in 2007. The CGI command injection pattern was extremely common in legacy web management interfaces of this era, where shell scripting and CGI were used without the benefit of modern security development practices.

Exploitation Context

PBX systems like OmniPCX Enterprise are attractive targets for several reasons:

• Telecommunications fraud: Compromising a PBX enables toll fraud — using the organization's telephony infrastructure to make unauthorized international calls, sometimes racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars in charges
• Intelligence collection: A compromised enterprise PBX can intercept internal voice communications, voicemail, and metadata about who is calling whom within an organization
• Internal network pivot: PBX servers are typically placed on internal network segments with trust relationships to corporate IT infrastructure, making them valuable pivot points for lateral movement
• Long-lived legacy deployments: Enterprise PBX systems are often managed by facilities or telecom teams rather than IT security, and may lag significantly behind on security patching. Systems deployed in the mid-2000s may have remained in service for 15+ years.
• Nation-state targeting: State actors and intelligence services have historically targeted enterprise telephony systems for signals intelligence collection against foreign corporations and government entities

Remediation

1. Apply vendor patch: Contact Alcatel-Lucent / Nokia to obtain and apply the available security patch for OmniPCX Enterprise.
2. Restrict access to management interface: The Unified Maintenance Tool web interface should only be accessible from dedicated management workstations — never from general employee networks or the internet.
3. Replace end-of-life systems: Legacy OmniPCX Enterprise systems that cannot receive patches should be replaced with modern, supported unified communications platforms.
4. Network segmentation: Isolate the PBX server on a dedicated telephony VLAN with strict firewall rules controlling which hosts can reach the management interface and which protocols are permitted.
5. Audit for compromise indicators: Review web server access logs on the OmniPCX Enterprise server for suspicious requests to masterCGI, unexpected outbound connections, and signs of unauthorized configuration changes.