CriticalCVE-2024-51378

    CyberPanel Incorrect Default Permissions Vulnerability (CVE-2024-51378)

    Published In CISA KEV since Sources: CVE.org, pwn.watch

    What is affected, what to do

    This vulnerability allows an attacker to bypass authentication and execute arbitrary commands using shell metacharacters in the statusfile property. It affects CyberPanel versions up to 2.3.7 and is actively exploited in ransomware campaigns since October 2024. A patch is available in version 2.3.8. The urgency to patch is high due to the remote and unauthenticated nature of the exploit.

    The vulnerability is being actively exploited; treat it as a priority. CISA lists it as used in ransomware campaigns. Update CyberPanel to version 2.3.8. Immediate actions, mitigation and detection rules are in the runbook below.

    Affected
    • CyberPanel lt *..2.3.8
    Fixed in
    • CyberPanel 2.3.8

    Not sure whether and how you are affected? Ask a question about this vulnerability

    Metrics

    10.0

    Priority

    XIEM Effective CVSS: highest available CVSS rating from NVD and vendor data.

    Source: NVD, CVSS v3

    10.0

    CVSS v3

    Severity Critical on the scale from 0 to 10.

    Source: CVE.org, pwn.watch

    94.8 %

    EPSS score

    High — model estimates ≥ 50% chance of real-world exploitation within 30 days.

    Source: FIRST EPSS, percentile 99.86

    Show all metrics
    Severity
    Critical
    Priority (0–325)

    The priority score is a consolidated metric that condenses several individual signals into a single, action-guiding ranking: technical severity (CVSS), exploitation likelihood (EPSS), known-exploited status (KEV) and the context of the affected asset. The aim is to answer the only truly important question in vulnerability management: what first?

    Read in glossary
    261.51 Methodology
    Exploit maturity

    An exploit is code or a technique that specifically uses a concrete vulnerability to force unintended behaviour — such as executing code or escalating privileges. It is the tool that turns a theoretical flaw into a practical attack.

    Read in glossary
    actively exploitedSource: VulnCheck KEV (opens in a new tab) How we classify
    XIEM Effective CVSS

    XIEM® is the tiered managed-security operating model from NEOSEC and a registered trademark of NEOSEC GmbH. It extends classic SIEM — the central collection, normalisation and correlation of security-relevant events — with endpoint forensics, network visibility and deception technology, and consolidates them into three building tiers: Sentry, Orchestrate and Command.

    Read in glossary
    10.0 Methodology
    CVSS v3

    CVSS is the globally established, open standard for assessing the technical severity of a vulnerability on a scale from 0 to 10. It describes how easily a flaw can be exploited and what damage it can cause — but not how likely its actual exploitation is. CVSS and the complementary EPSS deliberately answer different questions.

    Read in glossary
    10.0
    EPSS score

    The EPSS score is the absolute model output for an individual vulnerability: the estimated probability of real-world exploitation within the next 30 days, expressed as a value between 0 and 1 (i.e. 0 % to 100 %). A score of 0.42 means „the model estimates a 42 % chance of real-world exploitation within 30 days“.

    Read in glossary
    94.8 %
    High — model estimates ≥ 50% chance of real-world exploitation within 30 days.
    EPSS percentile

    The EPSS percentile is the relative position of a vulnerability within all EPSS-scored CVEs, expressed as a value between 0 and 1. A percentile of 0.90 means „this CVE has a higher EPSS score than 90 % of all other scored CVEs“. Unlike the EPSS score, it is not a probability — but a positioning within a ranking.

    Read in glossary
    99.86
    Critical — this CVE ranks in the top fifth of all CVEs scored today (rank ≥ 80%).
    KEV status

    The KEV catalogue is a list maintained by the US authority CISA of vulnerabilities for which active exploitation in the wild has been confirmed. It answers not the question „how severe?“ but „is it already being attacked?“ — thereby sharply prioritising patching.

    Read in glossary
    Actively exploited
    Published
    In CISA KEV since

    The KEV catalogue is a list maintained by the US authority CISA of vulnerabilities for which active exploitation in the wild has been confirmed. It answers not the question „how severe?“ but „is it already being attacked?“ — thereby sharply prioritising patching.

    Read in glossary

    Response and mitigation

    Why act now?

    Prioritisation rationale

    This CVE is on KEV for several converging reasons: it is unauthenticated, network-exploitable, grants command execution as root, and was documented in mass ransomware deployment by PSAUX against internet-exposed CyberPanel hosts. Exploitation likelihood ranks among the very highest in the entire KEV catalogue because a public exploit exists and the product is commonly used as a shared-hosting panel sitting directly on the internet. For NIS2-scoped organisations running CyberPanel at the perimeter — or for any hosting provider — this is a P1 incident with assumed-compromise handling; purely internal, segmented installs are P2 but still fall inside the 72-hour patch window recommended by BSI guidance.

    1. Runbook step 1

      Immediate response (0-24 h)

      • Upgrade CyberPanel to commit 1c0c6cb or later (versions 2.3.6 and 2.3.7 are vulnerable; 2.3.8 ships the fix). If an immediate upgrade is not feasible, restrict the admin panel (default ports 8090/tcp, 7080/tcp) at the firewall or reverse proxy so it is only reachable from a management VLAN or over VPN.
      • Take internet-exposed CyberPanel instances offline or ACL them immediately — the flaw is unauthenticated, network-reachable, and actively weaponised by the PSAUX ransomware operation.
      • Triage affected hosts forensically before patching: look for unknown cron jobs, foreign SSH keys in /root/.ssh/authorized_keys, unexpected processes under the lscpd/gunicorn service account, and PSAUX-typical artefacts (.psaux file extensions, ransom notes).
      • After patching, rotate every secret stored on the host: MySQL root, CyberPanel admin, API tokens, Let's Encrypt account keys, SSH host keys, and every tenant mail/FTP password.
      • Verify and air-gap backups of hosted tenant data (websites, mailboxes, databases) before triggering any recovery or restore workflow — assume ransomware access has already occurred.

    2. Runbook step 2

      Mitigation layers

      • Network segmentation: at the reverse proxy (nginx/HAProxy), block inbound requests to /dns/getresetstatus and /ftp/getresetstatus via a dedicated location block until the instance is patched. These paths are not needed by legitimate external clients.
      • WAF rule: deny HTTP requests to /(dns|ftp)/getresetstatus whose statusfile parameter contains shell metacharacters (;, |, &, `, $(, newline, ../). ModSecurity example: SecRule REQUEST_URI "@rx /(dns|ftp)/getresetstatus" "chain,deny,id:1005137800" chain SecRule ARGS:statusfile "@rx [;|&\x60$\n]".
      • Method enforcement: because secMiddleware only validates POST, force the proxy to return 405 for GET on the affected endpoints — that neutralises the actual bypass vector.
      • Endpoint hardening: via EDR rule or AppArmor/SELinux profile, block or alert when the CyberPanel service account (gunicorn, lscpd) spawns python, bash, sh, wget, or curl as child processes.
      • Least-privilege review: CyberPanel typically runs as root — move to an unprivileged service user where supported and audit sudoers. Restrict outbound traffic from the CyberPanel host to known package-repository and ACME destinations to break C2 and payload-staging.

    3. Runbook step 3

      Detection rules

      • Webserver access logs (nginx/OpenLiteSpeed): alert on any GET or PUT request to /dns/getresetstatus or /ftp/getresetstatus. Sigma shape: selection: cs-uri-stem|contains: '/getresetstatus' combined with cs-method != 'POST' or cs-uri-query|re: '[;|&$]'`.
      • Linux auditd/Sysmon-for-Linux: process ancestry where gunicorn or python spawns a shell interpreter (/bin/sh -c) that in turn runs curl, wget, chmod +x, nohup, or base64 -d. KQL shape: DeviceProcessEvents | where InitiatingProcessFileName in ('gunicorn','python','python3') and FileName in ('sh','bash','curl','wget','chmod').
      • Filesystem telemetry: new executable files under /tmp, /var/tmp, or /dev/shm appearing shortly after a request to the affected endpoints, plus changes to /etc/cron.d/, /etc/systemd/system/, and ~/.ssh/authorized_keys.
      • Network telemetry (Zeek/Suricata): outbound connections from the CyberPanel host to unlisted IPs on uncommon ports (anything other than 80/443/53/25/21). PSAUX used HTTP stagers on non-standard high ports during the October 2024 wave.
      • Ransomware-specific: bulk file-rename events in a short window (inotify/EDR file-modification rate), plus the appearance of .psaux extensions or ransom-note filenames inside tenant webroots.

    Detection rules

    No NEOSEC detection rule is available for this vulnerability yet.

    Classification under NIS2 and CRA

    Rule-based classification from exploitation status and severity. It does not replace a case-by-case assessment.

    NIS2

    NIS2 is EU Directive (EU) 2022/2555 to raise the level of cybersecurity across the Union. It substantially broadens obligations compared with the first NIS directive: more sectors, mandatory risk management, staged reporting duties and personal accountability of senior management.

    Read in glossary
    Actively exploited: treat the vulnerability as a priority in vulnerability handling under Art. 21(2)(e) NIS2. If it is exploited in your environment, check the reporting obligation under Art. 23 (early warning within 24 hours).
    CRA

    The CRA is EU Regulation (EU) 2024/2847 setting horizontal cybersecurity requirements for „products with digital elements“ — from industrial controllers and software to connected consumer devices. For the first time manufacturers must ensure security across the entire product lifecycle, handle vulnerabilities and provide security updates.

    Read in glossary
    Since 11.09.2026, manufacturers of affected products with digital elements must report actively exploited vulnerabilities under Art. 14 CRA, with an early warning within 24 hours via ENISA's single reporting platform.
    ISO/IEC 27001

    ISO/IEC 27001 is the internationally leading standard for an information security management system (ISMS). It describes a risk-based, process-oriented framework to systematically plan, implement, review and improve information security.

    Read in glossary
    Control A.8.8, management of technical vulnerabilities: assess relevance to your systems, plan remediation and keep evidence.

    Description

    getresetstatus in dns/views.py and ftp/views.py in CyberPanel (aka Cyber Panel) before 1c0c6cb allows remote attackers to bypass authentication and execute arbitrary commands via /dns/getresetstatus or /ftp/getresetstatus by bypassing secMiddleware (which is only for a POST request) and using shell metacharacters in the statusfile property, as exploited in the wild in October 2024 by PSAUX. Versions through 2.3.6 and (unpatched) 2.3.7 are affected.

    Source: CISA KEV Catalog, cvelistv5, NVD (NIST), CVE.org (MITRE), pwn.watch

    Affected products

    The following versions are affected. Older releases of the same product line are also vulnerable unless stated otherwise.

    Affected products
    Affected versionsFixed in
    cyberpanelcyberpanel
    • < 2.3.8
    • 2.3.8

    Vendors and products

    Public exploit references

    Publicly reported proof-of-concepts, exploit modules and detection templates for this vulnerability. NEOSEC links to the original sources only and does not provide any exploit code.

    Public exploit references
    CISA KEV CatalogCISA Known Exploited Vulnerability (opens in a new tab)cisa.govactively exploited

    References & sources

    • cwe.mitre.orgdata/definitions/78.html
    • github.comusmannasir/cyberpanel/commit/1c0c6cbcf71abe573da0b5fddfb9603e74…
    • refr4g.github.ioposts/cyberpanel-command-injection-vulnerability
    • cyberpanel.netCyberPersons advisory: CVE-2024-51378pwn-watch
    • cwe.mitre.orgdata/definitions/420.html
    • cyberpanel.netCyberPersons advisory: CVE-2024-51567pwn-watch
    • bleepingcomputer.comnews/security/massive-psaux-ransomware-attack-targets-22-000-cy…
    • cisa.govknown-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog?field_cve=CVE-2024-51378government-resource
    • pwn.watchpwn.watch: CyberPersons CyberPanel: 2 actively exploited vulnerabilitiespwn-watch
    • NVD (NIST)NVD: CVE-2024-51567pwn-watch
    • NVD (NIST)NVD: CVE-2024-51378pwn-watch
    • cisa.govCISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalogpwn-watch
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