Versa Director: file access flaw under attack

What is affected

Versa Director 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.

The Versa Director GUI contains an unrestricted upload of file with dangerous type vulnerability that allows administrators with Provider-Data-Center-Admin or Provider-Data-Center-System-Admin privileges to customize the user interface. The “Change Favicon” (Favorite Icon) enables the upload of a .png file, which can be exploited to upload a malicious file with a .png extension disguised as an image.

What an attacker can do

This is a file access flaw. It lets an attacker read or write files they should never reach, such as configuration files that hold passwords, or upload a malicious file that the system then runs.

How it is reached

Over the internet or network

Access the attacker needs

An administrator account

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 Versa Director 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.

Vendor advisories and fixes

• versa-networks.comversa-networks.com/blog/versa-security-bulletin-update-on-cve-2024-39717-versa-director-da

How urgent is it

CISA added this vulnerability to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalogue on August 23, 2024, which means there is reliable evidence of attacks in the wild. US federal agencies must fix it by September 13, 2024, 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 4.0% probability that this flaw will be exploited somewhere in the next 30 days. That is higher than 90% of all scored vulnerabilities.

Its CVSS severity score is 7.2 out of 10 (high), as recorded in the US National Vulnerability Database.

Technical description

The Versa Director GUI provides an option to customize the look and feel of the user interface. This option is only available for a user logged with Provider-Data-Center-Admin or Provider-Data-Center-System-Admin. (Tenant level users do not have this privilege). The “Change Favicon” (Favorite Icon) option can be mis-used to upload a malicious file ending with .png extension to masquerade as image file. This is possible only after a user with Provider-Data-Center-Admin or Provider-Data-Center-System-Admin has successfully authenticated and logged in.