CVE-2018-11138 — Kace System Management Appliance
CRITICALCVE-2018-11138 is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.8) OS Command Injection vulnerability in quest kace system management appliance. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2022-03-25) and has been used in ransomware campaigns — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.
The '/common/download_agent_installer.php' script in the Quest KACE System Management Appliance 8.0.318 is accessible by anonymous users and can be abused to execute arbitrary commands on the system.
Exploitation Status
Actively exploited in the wild
- Confirmed by CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2022-03-25 — including use in ransomware campaigns. 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-2018-11138.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2018-11138 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 394,415 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the ≥ 90% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Description
The '/common/download_agent_installer.php' script in the Quest KACE System Management Appliance 8.0.318 is accessible by anonymous users and can be abused to execute arbitrary commands on the system.
Affected Products
kace system management appliancequestResearch use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Quest KACE Systems Management - Command Injection (Metasploit)
by Metasploit · Jun 27, 2018
Detection & mitigation playbook
Vendor / applianceDetect
Inventory every quest kace system management appliance deployment and check each version against the affected-products list above.
Remediation status
No patch has shipped for CVE-2018-11138 yet — track the quest kace system management appliance advisory for a fixed release and apply the workarounds below in the meantime.
Mitigate without a patch
Stop passing untrusted input into the interpreter or shell: call the affected binary with an argument array rather than a composed command string, reject anything outside a strict allowlist of expected values, and run the component under an account that cannot reach beyond the work it legitimately does. Alongside that, restrict the management interface to trusted networks and apply the vendor's recommended configuration mitigations.
How to detect CVE-2018-11138
A community-maintained Nuclei template exists for this CVE. You can scan for it directly:
nuclei -id cve-2018-11138 -u https://target- Template
- Quest KACE System Management Appliance 8.0.318 - Remote Code Execution
- Severity
- critical
- Impact
- An attacker can execute arbitrary commands on the affected system, potentially leading to complete system compromise, data theft, or further network exploitation.
- Remediation
- Upgrade to a patched version of Quest KACE System Management Appliance or apply the necessary security patches provided by Quest Software.
Template by ProjectDiscovery nuclei-templates (ritikchaddha), MIT licensed. View the full template. Scan only systems you are authorised to test.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2018-11138 being exploited in your environment?
Detect and block the exploit chain at execution, on systems you cannot patch yet.