CVE-2016-9554
The Sophos Web Appliance Remote / Secure Web Gateway server (version 4.2.1.3) is vulnerable to a Remote Command Injection vulnerability in its web administrative interface.
Does this matter?
EPSS puts the probability of exploitation in the next 30 days at 25.1%, higher than 98% of all known CVEs. Patch or mitigate before the next change window.
Description
The Sophos Web Appliance Remote / Secure Web Gateway server (version 4.2.1.3) is vulnerable to a Remote Command Injection vulnerability in its web administrative interface. These vulnerabilities occur in MgrDiagnosticTools.php (/controllers/MgrDiagnosticTools.php), in the component responsible for performing diagnostic tests with the UNIX wget utility. The application doesn't properly escape the information passed in the 'url' variable before calling the executeCommand class function ($this->dtObj->executeCommand). This function calls exec() with unsanitized user input allowing for remote command injection. The page that contains the vulnerabilities, /controllers/MgrDiagnosticTools.php, is accessed by a built-in command answered by the administrative interface. The command that calls to that vulnerable page (passed in the 'section' parameter) is: 'configuration'. Exploitation of this vulnerability yields shell access to the remote machine under the 'spiderman' user account.
- CVSS 3.0
- 7.2 HIGHCVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
- EPSS
- 25.06% probability · 98th percentile
- Public exploits
- 1 in Exploit-DB · verified · first 12 December 2016
- CISA KEV
- Not listed
- Weakness
- CWE-77
- Affected
- sophos/web appliance
- Source
- cve@mitre.org
EPSS moved from 21.3% on 21 September 2026 to 25.1% on 27 October 2026. The dashed line is the ten per cent mark our analysts treat as “patch before the next change window”.
Public exploits (1)
Entries in Exploit-DB that cite this CVE. Links go to the Exploit-DB page and to the file in the public repository; nothing is hosted here. A verified tick means the Exploit-DB team confirmed the exploit works against the stated version.
References
- http://pastebin.com/UB8Ye6ZUExploit
- http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/95858Third Party Advisory, VDB Entry
- https://community.sophos.com/products/web-appliance/b/blog/posts/release-of-swa-version-4-3-1Release Notes
- http://pastebin.com/UB8Ye6ZUExploit
- http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/95858Third Party Advisory, VDB Entry
- https://community.sophos.com/products/web-appliance/b/blog/posts/release-of-swa-version-4-3-1Release Notes
Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA, exploits from Exploit-DB. Refreshed daily. Download this record as JSON.