cbcvebase.
CVE-2021-29441
published 2021-04-27

CVE-2021-29441: Nacos is a platform designed for dynamic service discovery and configuration and service management. In Nacos before version 1.4.1, when configured to use…

PriorityP190critical9.8CVSS 3.1
AVNACLPRNUINSUCHIHAH
ITWEXPLOITVulnCheck KEVInitial access
Exploited in the wild
EPSS
74.82%
99.4th percentile
Nacos is a platform designed for dynamic service discovery and configuration and service management. In Nacos before version 1.4.1, when configured to use authentication (-Dnacos.core.auth.enabled=true) Nacos uses the AuthFilter servlet filter to enforce authentication. This filter has a backdoor that enables Nacos servers to bypass this filter and therefore skip authentication checks. This mechanism relies on the user-agent HTTP header so it can be easily spoofed. This issue may allow any user to carry out any administrative tasks on the Nacos server.

Affected

1 ranges
VendorProductVersion rangeFixed in
alibabanacos< 1.4.11.4.1

Detection & IOCsextracted from sources · hover to see the quote

url/nacos/v1/cs/configs?dataId=nacos.cfg.dataIdfoo&group=foo&content=helloWorld
path/nacos/v1/cs/configs
  • Send two identical POST requests to /nacos/v1/cs/configs — one without User-Agent and one with 'User-Agent: Nacos-Server'. A 403 on the first and 200 on the second confirms the auth-bypass backdoor is active.
  • Response body of the bypassed request returns the literal string 'true' and Content-Type header contains 'application/json', confirming successful exploitation.
  • The AuthFilter servlet filter is bypassed when the HTTP request carries the 'Nacos-Server' User-Agent header; monitor for administrative API calls bearing this User-Agent from non-server sources.
  • ·The authentication bypass is only exploitable when Nacos is explicitly configured to use authentication. If auth is disabled (default), the filter is not active and the bypass is moot.
  • ·Affected versions are Nacos prior to 1.4.1; the Nuclei template also targets up to 2.3.5, so detection should be applied across that full range.

CVSS provenance

nvdv3.19.8CRITICALCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
nvdv2.07.5HIGHAV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P
vulncheck8.6HIGH
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