A safety vulnerability in Nagios XI 2024R1.2.2, tracked as CVE-2024-54961, has been disclosed, permitting unauthenticated attackers to retrieve delicate person info, together with usernames and electronic mail addresses, from the community monitoring platform.
This high-severity flaw (CVSSv3 rating: 6.5) exposes organizations to heightened dangers of phishing campaigns, credential-stuffing assaults, and lateral motion inside compromised networks.
Technical Breakdown of the Vulnerability
The vulnerability resides in improper entry controls inside Nagios XI’s internet interface.
Unauthenticated attackers can instantly entry a number of administrative pages by way of crafted HTTP requests, bypassing authentication mechanisms designed to limit delicate knowledge.
Exploitation doesn’t require superior instruments or methods—attackers want solely navigate to weak endpoints, reminiscent of person administration or system configuration panels, to extract plaintext usernames and related electronic mail addresses.
This info disclosure flaw (CWE-200) stems from inadequate validation of person periods.
Nagios XI 2024R1.2.2 fails to confirm permissions for particular API endpoints, enabling unauthorized enumeration of person accounts.
Safety researchers observe that uncovered electronic mail addresses might facilitate focused social engineering assaults, whereas usernames present adversaries with a place to begin for brute-force password-guessing makes an attempt.
Implications for Enterprise Safety
The publicity of person credentials poses fast dangers:
- Phishing Acceleration: Attackers can craft hyper-personalized phishing emails utilizing respectable electronic mail addresses, growing the probability of profitable credential harvesting.
- Password Assaults: With legitimate usernames, adversaries can automate login makes an attempt in opposition to Nagios XI’s internet interface or reused credentials throughout company techniques.
- Provide Chain Compromise: Nagios XI typically integrates with privileged techniques like Energetic Listing; compromised credentials might grant entry to broader infrastructure.
Notably, this vulnerability continues a sample of entry management failures in Nagios XI.
In 2023, 4 crucial flaws (CVE-2023-40931 to CVE-2023-40934) allowed comparable knowledge extraction by way of SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS), highlighting systemic points within the platform’s safety structure.
Mitigation and Response
Nagios Enterprises has launched patches in subsequent variations, urging all customers to right away improve to Nagios XI 2024R1.2.3 or later.
Organizations unable to patch ought to:
- Limit community entry to Nagios XI interfaces utilizing firewall guidelines.
- Implement Net Utility Firewalls (WAFs) to dam unauthorized entry to
/nagiosxi/admin/
paths. - Monitor logs for uncommon entry patterns to person administration endpoints.
Historic Context and Persistent Dangers
This disclosure follows a 2021 audit revealing 24 vulnerabilities in Nagios XI, together with distant code execution flaws.
The recurrence of authentication bypass points underscores the challenges of securing complicated monitoring platforms.
Enterprises should assume legacy Nagios deployments harbor undisclosed vulnerabilities and undertake zero-trust rules for monitoring techniques.
CVE-2024-54961 serves as a crucial reminder of the dangers inherent in community monitoring instruments.
Safety groups ought to prioritize patching, section monitoring infrastructure, and conduct common entry management audits.
As attackers more and more goal operational know-how, securing platforms like Nagios XI turns into important to sustaining organizational resilience in opposition to evolving cyber threats.
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