Risk actors are trying to take advantage of a not too long ago disclosed safety flaw impacting Apache Struts that might pave the best way for distant code execution.
The difficulty, tracked as CVE-2024-53677, carries a CVSS rating of 9.5 out of 10.0, indicating vital severity. The vulnerability shares similarities with one other vital bug the venture maintainers addressed in December 2023 (CVE-2023-50164, CVSS rating: 9.8), which additionally got here beneath energetic exploitation shortly after public disclosure.
“An attacker can manipulate file add params to allow paths traversal and beneath some circumstances this will result in importing a malicious file which can be utilized to carry out Distant Code Execution,” based on the Apache advisory.
In different phrases, profitable exploitation of the flaw may enable a malicious actor to add arbitrary payloads to vulnerable situations, which may then be leveraged to run instructions, exfiltrate knowledge, or obtain further payloads for follow-on exploitation.
The vulnerability impacts the next variations, and has been patched in Struts 6.4.0 or higher –
- Struts 2.0.0 – Struts 2.3.37 (Finish-of-Life),
- Struts 2.5.0 – Struts 2.5.33, and
- Struts 6.0.0 – Struts 6.3.0.2
Dr. Johannes Ullrich, dean of analysis for SANS Know-how Institute, mentioned that an incomplete patch for CVE-2023-50164 could have led to the brand new drawback, including exploitation makes an attempt matching the publicly-released proof-of-concept (PoC) have been detected within the wild.
“At this level, the exploit makes an attempt are trying to enumerate weak programs,” Ullrich famous. “Subsequent, the attacker makes an attempt to search out the uploaded script. Thus far, the scans originate solely from 169.150.226[.]162.”
To mitigate the danger, customers are really helpful to improve to the newest model as quickly as doable and rewrite their code to make use of the brand new Motion File Add mechanism and associated interceptor.
“Apache Struts sits on the coronary heart of many company IT stacks, driving public-facing portals, inside productiveness purposes, and significant enterprise workflows,” Saeed Abbasi, product supervisor of Risk Analysis Unit at Qualys, mentioned. “Its recognition in high-stakes contexts signifies that a vulnerability like CVE-2024-53677 may have far-reaching implications.”