Network Security

Critical Flaw in Sophos Cyberoam Appliances Allows Remote Code Execution

A critical vulnerability patched recently by Sophos in its Cyberoam firewall appliances allows a remote, unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary commands with root privileges.

Eduard Kovacs

October 14, 2019

A critical vulnerability patched recently by Sophos in its Cyberoam firewall appliances allows a remote, unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary commands with root privileges.

The flaw, tracked as CVE-2019-17059, affects the CyberoamOS Linux-based operating system and it can be exploited by sending specially crafted requests to the product’s Web Admin or SSL VPN consoles.

The vulnerability was disclosed through TheBestVPN, which recently published a blog post detailing the weakness and how it can be exploited.

“In most network environments, Cyberoam devices are used as firewalls and SSL VPN gateways. This gives a potential attacker a strong foothold in a network. It makes it easier to attack hosts inside the network, and since Cyberoam devices are usually trusted in most environments, this gives a would-be attacker extra edge,” Rob Mardisalu, co-founder and editor of TheBestVPN, said in a blog post.

There are reportedly over 96,000 internet-exposed Cyberoam appliances, including ones housed by enterprises, financial organizations, and educational institutions.

The vulnerability impacts Cyberoam firewalls running CyberoamOS 10.6.6 MR-5 and earlier. A patch has been delivered automatically starting with September 30 to customers who use default settings, and the fix will also be included in the upcoming 10.6.6 MR-6 version of the operating system, Sophos said in an advisory published last week.

Disclosure of this vulnerability comes just weeks after researchers made public the details of several flaws affecting enterprise VPN solutions from Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet and Pulse Secure.

These flaws have been exploited in the wild, including by nation-state threat actors, according to intelligence agencies in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Written By Eduard Kovacs

Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.

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