Cyber Security News

Nagios Vulnerability Allows Users to Retrieve Cleartext Administrative API Keys

Security researchers have identified two significant vulnerabilities in Nagios Log Server that expose critical system information and allow unauthorized service manipulation.

The vulnerabilities, tracked as CVE-2025-44823 and CVE-2025-44824, affect versions prior to 2024R1.3.2 and pose serious risks to enterprise monitoring infrastructure.

CVE IDAffected ProductCVSS ScoreSeverityImpact
CVE-2025-44823Nagios Log Server9.9CRITICALCleartext API key retrieval
CVE-2025-44824Nagios Log Server8.5HIGHElasticsearch service disruption

Critical API Key Exposure Vulnerability

CVE-2025-44823 represents a severe security flaw with a CVSS score of 9.9, classified as critical severity.

This vulnerability allows any authenticated user to retrieve cleartext administrative API keys through a simple GET request to /nagioslogserver/index.php/api/system/get_users.

The exposure occurs due to improper handling of sensitive system information, categorized under CWE-497.

The vulnerability requires minimal prerequisites – only valid user authentication is needed to exploit this flaw.

Once exploited, attackers gain access to administrative API credentials that can be used for complete system compromise.

The attack vector is network-based with low complexity, requiring no user interaction, making it particularly dangerous for organizations with multiple users accessing the system.

Service Disruption Through Privilege Escalation

The second vulnerability, CVE-2025-44824, scores 8.5 on the CVSS scale and enables authenticated users with read-only API access to stop the Elasticsearch service.

Despite receiving a “Could not stop elasticsearch” message in the API response, the service actually terminates successfully when users call /nagioslogserver/index.php/api/system/stop?subsystem=elasticsearch.

This flaw represents an incorrect authorization issue (CWE-863) where the system fails to properly validate user permissions before executing privileged operations.

Users with limited read-only access can effectively cause denial of service conditions by disrupting critical logging infrastructure components.

Organizations running affected Nagios Log Server versions should immediately upgrade to version 2024R1.3.2 or later to address both vulnerabilities.

The fixes were documented in the official Nagios changelog, indicating that the vendor has acknowledged and resolved these security issues.

Security teams should also audit user access levels and monitor for suspicious API calls targeting the vulnerable endpoints.

Given the critical nature of CVE-2025-44823, organizations should assume that administrative credentials may have been compromised if exploitation occurred and rotate all API keys accordingly.

The simultaneous disclosure of both vulnerabilities highlights the importance of comprehensive security testing in enterprise monitoring solutions, particularly those handling sensitive administrative functions and service control operations.

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Divya

Divya is a Senior Journalist at GBhackers covering Cyber Attacks, Threats, Breaches, Vulnerabilities and other happenings in the cyber world.

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