Progress Software Warns of Critical Vulnerability in WS_FTP Server

Multiple vulnerabilities have been discovered in Progress’s WS_FTP, which include .NET deserialization, directory traversal, reflected cross-site scripting (XSS), SQL injection, stored cross-site scripting, cross-site request forgery, and unauthenticated user enumeration vulnerability.

These vulnerabilities’ severities range from 5.3 (Medium) to 10.0 (Critical). However, Progress has released patches for fixing these vulnerabilities in the WS_FTP server. 

Moreover, the MOVEit file transfer application, which was one of the most exploited applications by threat actors, is also owned by Progress.

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Technical Analysis

The most critical vulnerabilities were CVE-2023-40044 and CVE-2023-42657. CVE-2023-40044 was a .NET deserialization vulnerability that an attacker could exploit to execute remote commands on the WS_FTP Server operating system. This vulnerability had a severity of 10.0 (Critical).

CVE-2023-42657 was associated with a directory traversal vulnerability which threat actors can use to perform file operations like delete, rename, rmdir, mkdir on files and folders outside of the WS_FTP folder path.

High Severity Vulnerabilities

In addition to this, three high-severity vulnerabilities were discovered on the WS_FTP server, which were CVE-2023-40045, CVE-2023-40046, and CVE-2023-40047. CVE-2023-40045 and CVE-2023-40047 had a severity score of 8.3 (High) and were related to reflected cross-site scripting and stored reflected cross-site scripting.

CVE-2023-40046 was linked with a SQL injection vulnerability that threat actors can use for gathering information about the structure and contents of the SQL database. This vulnerability can also be used to execute SQL for altering or deleting the database elements. 

Medium Severity Vulnerabilities

As for the Medium severity vulnerabilities, CVE-2023-40048 (CSRF – 6.8 (Medium)), CVE-2023-27665 (Reflected XSS – 6.1 (Medium)) and CVE-2023-40049 (Unauthenticated user enumeration) were discovered.

A security advisory has been published by Progress, which provides detailed information about these vulnerabilities. 

Fixed in Version

Fixed Version	Documentation	Release Notes
WS_FTP Server 2020.0.4 (8.7.4)	Upgrade Documentation	WS_FTP Server 2020
WS_FTP Server 2022.0.2 (8.8.2)	Upgrade Documentation	WS_FTP Server 2022

Users of the Progress WS_FTP server are recommended to upgrade to the latest version, 8.8.2 in order to fix these vulnerabilities from getting exploited by threat actors.

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