Critical MOVEit vulnerability puts huge swaths of the Internet at severe risk

The article mentions this, but this is the second time this piece of software has been in the news in as many years. Last year they had an SQL injection vulnerability on an unauthenticated page that was widely exploited to grab all kinds of juicy data. This year, it appears like their dumb, closed source SSH library may be responsible for allowing unauthenticated access.

I'm excited to see what vulnerability 2025 will bring. Maybe this will push more people to use audited open source code like openssh and the tooling built around it. I'm pretty sure sshd is compliant with HIPAA and PCI.

“The software, known as MOVEit and sold by Progress Software, allows enterprises to transfer and manage files using various specifications, including SFTP, SCP, and HTTP protocols and in ways that comply with regulations mandated under PCI and HIPAA. At the time this post went live, Internet scans indicated it was installed inside almost 1,800 networks around the world, with the biggest number in the US. A separate scan performed Tuesday by security firm Censys found2,700 such instances.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

On Tuesday, Progress Software disclosed CVE-2024-5806, a vulnerability that enables attackers to bypass authentication and gain access to sensitive data.

A deep-dive technical analysis by researchers with the offensive security firm watchTowr Labs said that the vulnerability, found in the MOVEit SFTP module, can be exploited in at least two attack scenarios.

It works by manipulating SSH public key paths to execute a “forced authentication” using a malicious SMB server and a valid username.

The researchers said that the requirements of uploading a public key to a vulnerable server isn’t a particularly high hurdle for attackers to clear, because the entire purpose of MOVEit is to transfer files.

The Progress Software advisory said: “A newly identified vulnerability in a third-party component used in MOVEit Transfer elevates the risk of the original issue mentioned above if left unpatched.

While the patch distributed by Progress on June 11th successfully remediates the issue identified in CVE-2024-5806, this newly disclosed third-party vulnerability introduces new risk.”

The original article contains 587 words, the summary contains 161 words. Saved 73%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!