A critical security flaw, CVE-2025-3648 (CVSS score 8.2), has been identified in ServiceNow’s Now Platform, posing a significant risk of data exposure and exfiltration. This vulnerability, dubbed Count(er) Strike by its discoverer, Varonis, stems from how the platform handles conditional Access Control List (ACL) rules, specifically allowing for data inference. ServiceNow has acknowledged the flaw, stating that both unauthenticated and authenticated users could leverage range query requests to infer data not intended for their access.
Varonis, which reported the flaw in February 2024, highlighted that malicious actors could exploit this vulnerability to gain unauthorized access to sensitive information, including personally identifiable information (PII) and credentials. The core of the problem lies in the record count UI element on list pages, which can be easily abused to infer confidential data from various tables within ServiceNow. This widespread impact potentially affects all ServiceNow instances and hundreds of tables.
A significant concern is the simplicity of exploitation; it requires only minimal table access, such as a weak user account or even a self-registered anonymous user.
This low barrier to entry bypasses the need for privilege escalation, directly leading to sensitive data exposure. While ACL configurations govern access to ServiceNow tables, the flaw specifically targets scenarios where access is denied due to a failed “Data Condition” or “Script Condition,” allowing attackers to glean information indirectly.
The vulnerability arises because ServiceNow displays different messages when access is blocked due to “Data Condition” or “Script Condition” (showing a count of removed rows) versus “Required Roles” or “Security Attribute Condition” (displaying a blank page). This discrepancy creates an exploitable attack pathway. Threat actors can use this behavioral difference to determine which access conditions are not met and then repeatedly query the database table to enumerate desired information, particularly impacting tables protected solely by data or script conditions.
ServiceNow has responded to these findings by implementing new security mechanisms like Query ACLs, Security Data Filters, and Deny-Unless ACLs to mitigate the risk of such data inference attacks. Although there’s no evidence of the flaw being exploited in the wild, ServiceNow strongly advises all customers to apply these new guardrails to sensitive tables. Additionally, ServiceNow customers should be aware that query range Query ACLs will soon default to deny, necessitating the creation of exclusions for authorized user actions.
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