Atlassian, a prominent business software provider, has urgently addressed a significant security vulnerability affecting its Confluence Data Center and Server products.
Furthermore, the company confirmed that this flaw, identified as CVE-2023-22515, had already been exploited as a zero-day threat in the wild, impacting a limited number of customers. This remotely exploitable flaw posed a risk to publicly accessible Confluence Data Center and Server instances, particularly those on the public internet. Attackers exploited this vulnerability to create unauthorized Confluence administrator accounts and gain access to Confluence instances.
Security firm Rapid7 emphasized the urgency for businesses to promptly apply available patches and mitigations. The company highlighted that this flaw’s remote exploitability is more in line with authentication bypass or remote code execution than a privilege escalation issue.
Atlassian published a FAQ to guide affected users in checking their Confluence instances for signs of compromise, including unexpected changes to user groups, newly created user accounts, and specific network access requests.
If a compromise is detected, Atlassian recommends immediately isolating and disconnecting the affected server from the network/internet and potentially other systems that share user bases or common credentials with the compromised system.
This incident underscores the importance of promptly addressing and patching security vulnerabilities, especially in widely-used software products like those offered by Atlassian, which have been targeted by cybercriminals and state-sponsored threat actors in the past.
CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog lists several Confluence vulnerabilities that have been identified as requiring urgent attention, further emphasizing the need for vigilance in maintaining the security of these systems.
