Fortinet has recently released an advisory regarding a critical flaw that affects FortisOS and FortiProxy. This vulnerability entails a heap-based buffer overflow issue, which, according to the company, has potentially been exploited in some attacks that are targeting several sectors including government, manufacturing, and critical infrastructure.
If this vulnerability is exploited, a remote attacker may be able to send specially crafted requests to vulnerable devices, allowing the execution of arbitrary code or commands.
To address this vulnerability, Fortinet strongly advises customers who have SSL-VPN enabled to promptly take action by upgrading to the most recent firmware release. In light of this, they provide the following recommendations:
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Thoroughly assess your systems to identify any signs of exploitation related to previous vulnerabilities such as FG-IR-22-377 / CVE-2022-40684.
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Maintain a strong focus on cyber hygiene and adhere to the patching recommendations provided by the vendor.
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Implement hardening recommendations, including the utilization of the FortiOS 7.2.0 Hardening Guide.
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Minimize the attack surface by disabling any unused features and managing devices via an out-of-band method when it’s possible to do so.
It is important to note that even if you do not operate SSL-VPN, it is still recommended to upgrade the affected devices as a precautionary measure.
Researchers Charles Fol and Dany Bach from Lexfo Security reported this vulnerability to Fortinet. They describe the issue as a reachable pre-authentication flaw that impacts all SSL VPN appliances. Furthermore, this issue affects various Fortis and FortiOS-6K7K versions, as well as several FortiProxy versions. For a comprehensive list of affected versions, please refer to Fortinet's official website.
According to a report by BleepingComputer, an examination of publicly exposed Fortigate firewalls reveals that there are over 250,000 installations worldwide, with a majority of them located in the United States.
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