CVE-2017-6316 — Netscaler Sd-Wan
CRITICALCVE-2017-6316 is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.8) vulnerability in citrix netscaler sd-wan. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2022-03-25) — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.
Citrix NetScaler SD-WAN devices through v9.1.2.26.561201 allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary shell commands as root via a CGISESSID cookie. On CloudBridge (the former name of…
Exploitation Status
Actively exploited in the wild
- Confirmed by CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2022-03-25. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2022-04-15.
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA (KEV catalog and SSVC triage) for CVE-2017-6316.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2017-6316 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). In the shaded patch-first corner (EPSS 50%+, CVSS 7.0+).
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 395,249 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the 50–90% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Description
Citrix NetScaler SD-WAN devices through v9.1.2.26.561201 allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary shell commands as root via a CGISESSID cookie. On CloudBridge (the former name of NetScaler SD-WAN) devices, the cookie name was CAKEPHP rather than CGISESSID.
Affected Products
netscaler sd-wancitrixResearch use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Netscaler SD-WAN 9.1.2.26.561201 - Command Injection (Metasploit)
by xort · Jul 19, 2017
Citrix CloudBridge - 'CAKEPHP' Cookie Command Injection
by xort · Jul 19, 2017
Detection & mitigation playbook
Vendor / applianceDetect
Inventory every citrix netscaler sd-wan deployment and check each version against the affected-products list above.
Remediation status
No patch has shipped for CVE-2017-6316 yet — track the citrix netscaler sd-wan advisory for a fixed release and apply the workarounds below in the meantime.
Mitigate without a patch
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands. Alongside that, restrict the management interface to trusted networks and apply the vendor's recommended configuration mitigations.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2017-6316 being exploited in your environment?
Detect and block the exploit chain at execution, on systems you cannot patch yet.