Description

Palo Alto Networks has released patches for two zero-day vulnerabilities in its PAN-OS firewall software, linked to a campaign named Operation Lunar Peek. The company identified these flaws in early November, following signs of potential exploitation on a cybercrime forum, and confirmed active attacks by November 15. The vulnerabilities affect the management web interface of PAN-OS firewalls exposed to untrusted internet traffic. The first vulnerability, CVE-2024-0012, is a critical authentication bypass that allows unauthenticated attackers to gain administrative privileges through the PAN-OS management interface. Exploiting this flaw enables attackers to modify configurations or leverage additional privilege escalation vulnerabilities, such as CVE-2024-9474. The second vulnerability, CVE-2024-9474, is a medium-severity issue that lets attackers with admin access escalate privileges to root on the firewall. To address these threats, Palo Alto Networks has provided updates for PAN-OS versions 11.2, 11.1, 11.0, 10.2, and 10.1. The company advises limiting management interface access to trusted internal IP addresses to reduce exposure. The Shadowserver Foundation reports a decrease in publicly accessible PAN-OS interfaces, indicating organizations are responding to the threat. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has added these vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, requiring government entities to remediate them by December 9, 2024. Palo Alto Networks has shared indicators of compromise (IoCs), including malicious file hashes and IPs, to assist organizations in detecting and mitigating these risks.