CVE-2020-15612 — CentOS Web Panel Authentication Bypass/RCE

This vulnerability allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code on affected installations of CentOS Web Panel cwp-e17.0.9.8.923. Authentication is not required to exploit this vulnerability. The specific flaw exists within ajax_ftp_manager.php. When parsing the userLogin parameter, the process does not properly validate a user-supplied string before using it to execute a system call. An attacker can leverage this vulnerability to execute code in the context of root. Was ZDI-CAN-9737.

Recent assessments:

wvu-r7 at July 29, 2020 5:36pm UTC reported:

This is a web hosting control panel for CentOS, sort of like cPanel. RCE in one of these could mean compromised user websites and data. Web hosting used to be super popular in the 2000s, but it has largely been supplanted by cheap virtualization and “cloud” platforms, IMHO.

I make some assumptions about this vuln, since the code is ionCube-protected, so there’s no source, only PHP bytecode. Setup is also a nightmare, and there are no provisions for tracking or rolling back changes. Patching can get sketchy.

I did not analyze the vuln, as attempting to install an older version of the software consequently broke it, and deobfuscating ionCube takes a significant amount of time.

Assessed Attacker Value: 3
Assessed Attacker Value: 3Assessed Attacker Value: 5