Summary:
Adobe has released some emergency security updates to address a critical ColdFusion vulnerability with proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit code. The company released an advisory on Monday, December 23, 2024, stating that the flaw, tracked as CVE-2024-53961 is caused by a path traversal weakness that impacts Adobe ColdFusion versions 2023 and 2021 and can enable attackers to read arbitrary files on vulnerable servers. Adobe is aware of the PoC released and stated this vulnerability has been assigned a “Priority 1” severity due to its high chance of being targeted and exploited in the wild. Despite this recommendation, Adobe has not disclosed whether this flaw has been leveraged in the wild yet. Adobe advises customers to review its updated serial filter documentation for more information on blocking insecure Wddx deserialization attacks. Despite its high attack complexity, CVE-2024-53961 does not require user interaction or privileges to be exploited. There’s no direct impact on system availability, but the potential damage to confidentiality and integrity is significant as it could lead to unauthorized access to sensitive files.

Security Officer Comments:
This sudden development comes as CISA urged software companies in May 2024 to weed out path traversal security bugs before shipping their products as they provide easy attack paths for adversaries to access sensitive credentials and data potentially for future brute-force attempts. Last year, CISA flagged two critical flaws in Adobe ColdFusion, and government agencies were mandated to secure their ColdFusion servers. In the past, adversaries have utilized ColdFusion vulnerabilities to breach outdated government servers for months, highlighting the targeted nature of attacks like these as well as the importance of prioritizing vulnerabilities for an organization’s patch management system based on their potential impact on confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data.

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