Adobe ColdFusion: authentication bypass flaw under attack

What is affected

Adobe ColdFusion is mostly run by companies, schools and public bodies, not on home computers. You are unlikely to have it yourself, but organisations that hold your data may. Breaches that start with flaws like this one are how personal data ends up leaked.

An authentication bypass vulnerability exists in Adobe ColdFusion which could result in an unauthorized user gaining administrative access.

What an attacker can do

This is a authentication bypass flaw. It lets an attacker get in without a valid username and password and act as a legitimate user, often as an administrator.

How it is reached

Over the internet or network

Access the attacker needs

No account needed

Does the victim have to do something?

No, works without the victim doing anything

What to do

1. At home: nothing to install. Keep your own devices updated and use a different password for every service, so that a breach at one organisation does not open your other accounts.
2. If you administer Adobe ColdFusion at work: apply the vendor's fix or mitigation now and review logs for signs of compromise, because the flaw was being exploited before it was listed.
3. If the product is past its support date and no fix exists, take it off the internet or retire it.

Apply updates per vendor instructions.

How urgent is it

CISA added this vulnerability to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalogue on March 3, 2022, which means there is reliable evidence of attacks in the wild. US federal agencies must fix it by March 24, 2022, a deadline that has already passed. That deadline does not bind anyone else, but it shows how seriously the agency rates it.

The EPSS model estimates a 94% probability that this flaw will be exploited somewhere in the next 30 days. That is higher than 99.8% of all scored vulnerabilities.

Its CVSS severity score is 9.8 out of 10 (critical), as recorded in the US National Vulnerability Database.

Technical description

administrator.cfc in Adobe ColdFusion 9.0, 9.0.1, 9.0.2, and 10 allows remote attackers to bypass authentication and possibly execute arbitrary code by logging in to the RDS component using the default empty password and leveraging this session to access the administrative web interface, as exploited in the wild in January 2013.