The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has added a newly discovered vulnerability in Versa Director to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2024-39717 and assigned a CVSS score of 6.6, is classified as a medium-severity issue. It revolves around a file upload bug in the “Change Favicon” feature, which allows threat actors to upload malicious files by disguising them as harmless PNG images. This vulnerability is significant enough to prompt CISA’s inclusion in the KEV list due to evidence of active exploitation.
CVE-2024-39717 is rooted in the Versa Director GUI, specifically within the interface customization options available to administrators with Provider-Data-Center-Admin or Provider-Data-Center-System-Admin privileges. By exploiting the “Change Favicon” feature, attackers can upload a malicious file with a .PNG extension that masquerades as a legitimate image. However, for the exploitation to succeed, the attacker must first authenticate and log in with the necessary privileges. This requirement provides some level of protection, but it does not eliminate the risk, especially in environments with weak access controls.
The exact circumstances surrounding the exploitation of CVE-2024-39717 remain unclear, but the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has confirmed that Versa Networks is aware of at least one case where the vulnerability was targeted. In that instance, the affected customer had failed to implement firewall guidelines published in 2015 and 2017, which allowed the threat actor to exploit the vulnerability without needing to use the GUI. This highlights the importance of adhering to security best practices and maintaining up-to-date defenses to mitigate such risks.
In response to the threat, CISA has mandated that Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies apply vendor-provided fixes for CVE-2024-39717 by September 13, 2024. The development follows CISA’s recent addition of four other vulnerabilities to the KEV catalog, underscoring the agency’s proactive approach to identifying and mitigating exploited security flaws. Organizations using Versa Director are strongly urged to prioritize the patching of this vulnerability to protect their systems from potential attacks.
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