CriticalCVE-2024-9463

    Palo Alto Networks Expedition OS Command Injection Vulnerability (CVE-2024-9463)

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

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    What is affected, what to do

    An OS command injection vulnerability in Palo Alto Networks Expedition allows an unauthenticated attacker to run arbitrary OS commands as root in Expedition, resulting in disclosure of usernames, cleartext passwords, device configurations, and device API keys of PAN-OS firewalls.

    The vulnerability is being actively exploited; treat it as a priority. Update Palo Alto Networks Expedition to version 1.2.96. Immediate actions, mitigation and detection rules are in the runbook below.

    Affected
    • Palo Alto Networks Expedition lt 1.2.0..1.2.96
    Fixed in
    • Palo Alto Networks Expedition 1.2.96

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

    Metrics

    9.9

    Priority

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

    Source: NVD, CVSS v4

    7.5

    CVSS v3

    Severity High on the scale from 0 to 10.

    Source: CVE.org, SingCERT, pwn.watch

    98.6 %

    EPSS score

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

    Source: FIRST EPSS, percentile 99.92

    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
    235.82 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
    9.9 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
    7.5
    CVSS v4

    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
    9.9
    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“.

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    98.6 %
    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.

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    99.92
    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
    CISA assessment (SSVC)
    Exploitation: active · automatable · Technical impact: total
    Source: CISA Vulnrichment, as of 20 August 2025
    CWE

    CWE is a catalogue of typical weakness types in software and hardware — such as flawed input validation, unsafe memory handling or poor authentication. Where a CVE names a concrete vulnerability in a concrete product, a CWE describes the underlying class of defect.

    Read in glossary
    CWE-78

    Response and mitigation

    Why act now?

    Prioritisation rationale

    This CVE sits on KEV for a hard reason: unauthenticated OS command injection as root in a tool that by design stores the crown jewels of the perimeter — PAN-OS admin credentials and API keys in cleartext. A successful hit yields full firewall takeover with no further lateral-movement effort, which is why exploitation likelihood ranks among the highest currently on KEV. Any organisation that ever used Expedition for PAN-OS migrations must treat the host as potentially compromised even if it has since been decommissioned — rotating the credentials it held is not optional. Internet-exposed Expedition instances are a P1 incident; internally reachable instances rank P2 with a 72-hour SLA.

    1. Runbook step 1

      Immediate response (0-24 h)

      • Upgrade Expedition to version 1.2.96 or later immediately (Palo Alto Networks advisory PAN-SA-2024-0010 / CVE-2024-9463). Fix has been available since October 2024.
      • If patching cannot happen today: take the Expedition instance offline or restrict access via firewall ACL to a single admin jump host (TCP/443, TCP/80). No internet exposure, no flat-VLAN reachability.
      • Treat every credential stored in Expedition as compromised: rotate PAN-OS admin passwords, regenerate API keys on every managed firewall, reset local Expedition DB accounts.
      • Diff managed PAN-OS device configurations against the last known-good snapshot — look for new admin accounts, altered security policies, modified service routes or management profiles.
      • Forensically image the Expedition host (typically an Ubuntu VM) before rebuild: /var/log/apache2/, /var/log/mysql/, /tmp/, PHP session directory and the shell history of root and www-data.

    2. Runbook step 2

      Mitigation layers

      • Network segmentation: Expedition belongs in an isolated management VLAN with deny-all default. Only named admin workstations reach the web UI; Expedition itself only reaches managed firewalls on the required PAN-OS API port (TCP/443).
      • Put a WAF or reverse proxy in front of Expedition and block requests containing shell metacharacters (;, |, `, $(, &&) in POST bodies and query strings on the affected endpoints; cap Content-Length on upload endpoints.
      • Post-patch: keep Expedition permanently behind VPN or ZTNA — it is a migration tool, not a service that needs continuous public reachability.
      • Least-privilege on the host: do not run Apache/PHP as root, trim SUID binaries, remove any sudo rules that let the web stack execute privileged commands.
      • Egress filtering from the Expedition host: outbound only to known PAN-OS management IPs and vendor update endpoints — blocks reverse-shell callbacks and data exfiltration.
      • Credential hygiene: register dedicated service accounts with least-privilege PAN-OS roles in Expedition, never super-admin accounts.

    3. Runbook step 3

      Detection rules

      • Apache access logs for POST requests against Expedition endpoints carrying shell metacharacters in body or query — Suricata/Zeek signature on POST /OS/ or /bin/ with URL-encoded ;, %7C, %24%28 in the payload.
      • Sysmon/auditd EID 1 or execve: process ancestry apache2 or php-fpm → /bin/sh, bash, nc, curl, wget, python on an Expedition host is highly suspicious. KQL shape: DeviceProcessEvents | where InitiatingProcessFileName in ("apache2","php","php-fpm") and FileName in ("sh","bash","nc","curl","wget","python","python3").
      • EDR/network: outbound connections from the Expedition host to non-PAN-OS IPs, especially TCP/4444, 1337, 8080 or cloud-hosting ASNs — indicative of reverse shell or exfiltration.
      • MySQL audit for atypical SELECT statements against the Expedition DB tables holding PAN-OS credentials and API keys outside the normal application query pattern.
      • File-system monitoring for new files in /tmp/, /var/www/html/ and the webroot with timestamps after suspected first contact — webshells typically drop as .php there. Sigma shape: file_event where path startswith '/var/www' and file_ext == 'php' and user == 'www-data'.

    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

    An OS command injection vulnerability in Palo Alto Networks Expedition allows an unauthenticated attacker to run arbitrary OS commands as root in Expedition, resulting in disclosure of usernames, cleartext passwords, device configurations, and device API keys of PAN-OS firewalls.

    Source: NVD (NIST), CISA KEV Catalog, CVE.org (MITRE), cvelistv5, CSA/SingCERT, 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
    Palo Alto NetworksExpedition
    • 1.2.0 – < 1.2.96
    • 1.2.96
    paloaltonetworksexpedition
    • 1.2.0 – < 1.2.96
    • 1.2.96

    Vendors and products

    Weakness classes (CWE)

    • CWE-78Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an OS Command ('OS Command Injection')

      Base

      The product constructs all or part of an OS command using externally-influenced input from an upstream component, but it does not neutralize or incorrectly neutralizes special elements that could modify the intended OS command when it is sent to a downstream component.

      Entry at MITRE CWE-78

    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

    • security.paloaltonetworks.comPalo Alto Networks advisory: CVE-2024-9463Vendor advisory, Mitigation, Vendor advisory, pwn-watch
    • cisa.govknown-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog?field_cve=CVE-2024-9463government-resource, US government resource
    • pwn.watchpwn.watch: Palo Alto Networks Expedition: 3 actively exploited vulnerabilitiespwn-watch
    • security.paloaltonetworks.comPalo Alto Networks advisory: CVE-2024-5910pwn-watch
    • NVD (NIST)NVD: CVE-2024-5910pwn-watch
    • NVD (NIST)NVD: CVE-2024-9463pwn-watch
    • NVD (NIST)NVD: CVE-2024-9465pwn-watch
    • cisa.govCISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalogpwn-watch
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