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SonicWall warns of a critical CVE-2025-23006 zero

criticalVulnerability exploited in the wildimportance 60CVE-2025-23006

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CVEVulnerabilityCVSSEPSSFlagsAffectedExposurePublished
CVE-2025-23006
Unauthenticated Deserialization RCE in SonicWall SMA1000 Appliances

CVE-2025-23006 is a deserialization of untrusted data flaw (CWE-502) in the Appliance Management Console (AMC) and Central Management Console (CMC) of SonicWall SMA1000 secure-access appliances. A remote, unauthenticated attacker who can reach a vulnerable console can submit crafted serialized data that, when processed, executes arbitrary operating-system commands on the appliance. Successful exploitation yields OS-level command execution, which is enough to fully compromise the appliance, pivot into the networks it protects, or stage ransomware. Any organization running a SonicWall SMA1000 appliance whose AMC or CMC is reachable — including management consoles exposed to the internet or to shared management networks — is affected. The flaw was added to CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2025-01-24 with known ransomware use, and EPSS assigns a 23.4% probability of exploitation within 30 days (98th percentile), although no public proof-of-concept is known and a CVSS score has not yet been published.

Do: Apply SonicWall's fix or vendor-specified mitigations immediately, per CISA's KEV required action; the available data does not state fixed version numbers, so use SonicWall's advisory to identify the correct firmware. Until patched, restrict AMC/CMC access to trusted management networks and remove any direct internet exposure of the consoles. Because ransomware use is known, hunt for indicators of compromise on internet-reachable SMA1000 appliances, including unexpected processes, new accounts, and unusual outbound connections.

9.823% KEV ransomware
  • SonicWall SMA1000 Appliances — Appliance Management Console (AMC) and Central Management Console (CMC)
largeon the order of tens of thousands of SMA1000-series appliance deployments, with likely thousands of management consoles internet-exposed
Full article502 words · extracted from securityaffairs.com · click to collapse

SonicWall warns customers of a critical zero-day vulnerability in SMA 1000 Series appliances, likely exploited in the wild.

SonicWall is warning customers of a critical security vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-23006 (CVSS score of 9,8) impacting its Secure Mobile Access (SMA) 1000 Series appliances. The vulnerability is a Pre-authentication deserialization of untrusted data issue in the SMA1000 Appliance Management Console (AMC) and Central Management Console (CMC) that has been likely exploited in attacks in the wild as a zero-day.

“Pre-authentication deserialization of untrusted data vulnerability has been identified in the SMA1000 Appliance Management Console (AMC) and Central Management Console (CMC), which in specific conditions could potentially enable a remote unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary OS commands.” reads the advisory. “IMPORTANT: “SonicWall PSIRT has been notified of possible active exploitation of the referenced vulnerability by threat actors. We strongly advises users of the SMA1000 product to upgrade to the hotfix release version to address the vulnerability.”

The flaw impacts version 12.4.3-02804 (platform-hotfix) and earlier versions, SonicWall urges customers to address the vulnerability as soon as possible.

The company released Version 12.4.3-02854 which addresses the flaw.

Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) discovered the vulnerability.

SonicWall has not disclosed details about the attacks that exploited the flaw as a zero-day, nor the attackers’ motivations

Experts also recommend restricting AMC and CMC access to trusted sources and following the SMA1000 Administration Guide’s best practices to reduce the vulnerability’s impact.

“To minimize the potential impact of the vulnerability, please ensure that you restrict access to trusted sources for the Appliance Management Console (AMC) and Central Management Console (CMC). Refer to the SMA1000 Administration Guide, section – Best Practices for Securing the Appliance.” concludes the advisory.

In March 2023, Mandiant researchers reported that alleged China-linked threat actors, tracked as UNC4540, deployed custom malware on a SonicWall SMA appliance. The malware allows attackers to steal user credentials, achieve persistence through firmware upgrades, and provides shell access.

The analysis of a compromised device revealed the presence of a set of files used by the attacker to gain highly privileged and available access to the appliance. The malicious code is composed of a series of bash scripts and a single ELF binary identified as a TinyShell variant.

The researchers believe that the threat actors deeply understand the appliance.

The malware was well tailored to the system to provide stability and maintain persistence, even in the case of installation of firmware upgrades.

“The primary purpose of the malware appears to be to steal hashed credentials from all logged in users. It does this in firewalld by routinely executing the SQL command select userName,password from Sessions against sqlite3 database /tmp/temp.db and copying them out to the attacker created text file /tmp/syslog.db.” reads the report published by Mandiant. “The source database /tmp/temp.db is used by the appliance to track session information, including hashed credentials. Once retrieved by the attacker the hashes could be cracked offline.”

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, SonicWall SMA1000)



Text extracted automatically; images, tables and formatting may be missing. Original: https://securityaffairs.com/173387/security/sonicwall-warns-zero-day-sma-1000-series.html