As a catastrophic security flaw, CVE-2025-31161 has severe implications, demanding immediate intervention.
Status: Analyzed
Last updated: 🕞 08 Apr 2025, 15:30 UTC
Originally published on: 🕗 03 Apr 2025, 20:15 UTC
Time between publication and last update: 4 days
CVSS Release: version 3
cve@mitre.org
Secondary
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CVE-2025-31161: CrushFTP 10 before 10.8.4 and 11 before 11.3.1 allows authentication bypass and takeover of the crushadmin account (unless a DMZ proxy instance is used), as exploited in the wild in March and April 2025, aka "Unauthenticated HTTP(S) port access." A race condition exists in the AWS4-HMAC (compatible with S3) authorization method of the HTTP component of the FTP server. The server first verifies the existence of the user by performing a call to login_user_pass() with no password requirement. This will authenticate the session through the HMAC verification process and up until the server checks for user verification once more. The vulnerability can be further stabilized, eliminating the need for successfully triggering a race condition, by sending a mangled AWS4-HMAC header. By providing only the username and a following slash (/), the server will successfully find a username, which triggers the successful anypass authentication process, but the server will fail to find the expected SignedHeaders entry, resulting in an index-out-of-bounds error that stops the code from reaching the session cleanup. Together, these issues make it trivial to authenticate as any known or guessable user (e.g., crushadmin), and can lead to a full compromise of the system by obtaining an administrative account.
The exploitability of CVE-2025-31161 depends on two key factors: attack complexity (the level of effort required to execute an exploit) and privileges required (the access level an attacker needs).
With low attack complexity and no required privileges, CVE-2025-31161 is an easy target for cybercriminals. Organizations should prioritize immediate mitigation measures to prevent unauthorized access and data breaches.
A lower complexity and fewer privilege requirements make exploitation easier. Security teams should evaluate these aspects to determine the urgency of mitigation strategies, such as patch management and access control policies.
Attack Complexity (AC) measures the difficulty in executing an exploit. A high AC means that specific conditions must be met, making an attack more challenging, while a low AC means the vulnerability can be exploited with minimal effort.
Privileges Required (PR) determine the level of system access necessary for an attack. Vulnerabilities requiring no privileges are more accessible to attackers, whereas high privilege requirements limit exploitation to authorized users with elevated access.
Above is the CVSS Sub-score Breakdown for CVE-2025-31161, illustrating how Base, Impact, and Exploitability factors combine to form the overall severity rating. A higher sub-score typically indicates a more severe or easier-to-exploit vulnerability.
Below is the Impact Analysis for CVE-2025-31161, showing how Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability might be affected if the vulnerability is exploited. Higher values usually signal greater potential damage.
NVD-CWE-Other
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