CVE-2022-34668

published 2022-08-29

CVE-2022-34668: NVFLARE, versions prior to 2.1.4, contains a vulnerability that deserialization of Untrusted Data due to Pickle usage may allow an unprivileged network…

Priority P2 71 critical 9.8 CVSS 3.1

AV N AC L PR N UI N S U C H I H A H

EXPLOIT

NVFLARE, versions prior to 2.1.4, contains a vulnerability that deserialization of Untrusted Data due to Pickle usage may allow an unprivileged network attacker to cause Remote Code Execution, Denial Of Service, and Impact to both Confidentiality and Integrity.

Affected

3 ranges

Vendor	Product	Version range	Fixed in
nvidia	nvflare	< 2.1.4	2.1.4
nvidia	nvflare	>= 0 < 2.1.4	2.1.4
nvidia	nvidia_flare	—	—

Detection & IOCs extracted from sources · hover to see the quote

port 4321↗

path poc/admin/transfer↗

filename nvflare-exploit-apply.txt↗

• → Detect deserialization of untrusted Pickle data over the network in NVFLARE; any inbound pickle payload from an unprivileged network peer to the NVFLARE server should be treated as a potential RCE attempt. ↗
• → Monitor NVFLARE admin console commands `submit_job` and `check_status server` issued by unexpected or low-privileged users, as these are used in the exploit chain to trigger the malicious pickle payload delivery. ↗
• → Alert on outbound connections from the NVFLARE server process to unexpected hosts/ports (e.g., port 4321), which may indicate successful RCE via the pickle payload establishing a reverse shell. ↗
• → Detect presence of the exploit patch file `nvflare-exploit-apply.txt` on client-side NVFLARE installations, indicating a tampered client that will send malicious pickle payloads to the server. ↗

• · The exploit targets NVFLARE versions prior to 2.1.4; the PoC was specifically tested against version 2.1.2. Upgrade to 2.1.4 or later to remediate. ↗
• · The exploit requires Python 3.9 or later on the attacker-controlled client node. ↗
• · The malicious modification is applied only to the client-side code; the server is a standard NVFLARE installation. Detection must therefore focus on anomalous pickle payloads arriving at the server from a compromised client. ↗
• · The server will display error messages after receiving the pickle payload because the payload is not valid NVFLARE data; these error messages can serve as a detection signal alongside the RCE callback. ↗

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