Cyber Security Enthusiast

How we analyzed and built an exploit PoC for CVE-2022-24086, a Magento RCE

Once a critical vulnerability in widely used software emerges, the race for an exploit PoC starts. Sometimes, an exploit pops up right away, but other times a high-risk CVE can live on in unpatched technologies for months, years even – which adversaries know full well.

That’s why CVE-2022-24086 caught our eye: because we saw an opportunity to build an exploit PoC before bad actors do, and persuade Magento shop owners to patch before they expose customers and themselves.

Through our analysis, we identified where in code the vulnerability exists starting from the available patch. We also managed to trigger RCE from the user input, which goes through the vulnerable code and that can be exploited to execute arbitrary code. All this without an existing exploit proof of concept.

After identifying a server side template injection, we started unpacking the vulnerability, discovering several “magic” functions in the process. These functions allowed us to successfully use STTI payloads and build our way to partial and then full control by triggering Remote Code Execution. In our presentation, we go through each step of our analysis and the thinking behind them to explain how a persistent adversary can manipulate this vulnerability to capture sensitive customer information and achieve persistence in the compromised system.

We also share a working exploit PoC for this, albeit patched, vulnerability and encourage pentesters and other infosec specialists tasked with security testing to include it in their work.