Acclaim Systems USAHERDS: authentication bypass flaw under attack

What is affected

Acclaim Systems USAHERDS 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.

Acclaim Systems USAHERDS contains a hard-coded credentials vulnerability that could allow an attacker to achieve remote code execution on the system that runs the application. The MachineKey must be obtained via a separate vulnerability or other channel.

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 Acclaim Systems USAHERDS 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 mitigations per vendor instructions or discontinue use of the product if mitigations are unavailable. Please contact the product developer for support and vulnerability mitigation.

Vendor advisories and fixes

• acclaimsystems.comwww.acclaimsystems.com/#contact
• tnatc.orgwww.tnatc.org/#contact

How urgent is it

CISA added this vulnerability to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalogue on December 23, 2024, which means there is reliable evidence of attacks in the wild. US federal agencies must fix it by January 13, 2025, 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 18% probability that this flaw will be exploited somewhere in the next 30 days. That is higher than 97% of all scored vulnerabilities.

Its CVSS severity score is 8.1 out of 10 (high), as recorded in the US National Vulnerability Database.

Technical description

Acclaim USAHERDS through 7.4.0.1 uses hard-coded credentials.