CVE-2018-13379
CRITICALCVE-2018-13379 is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.1) Path Traversal vulnerability. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2021-11-03) 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.
An Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory ("Path Traversal") in Fortinet FortiOS 6.0.0 to 6.0.4, 5.6.3 to 5.6.7 and 5.4.6 to 5.4.12 and FortiProxy 2.0.0, 1.2.0…
Exploitation Status
Actively exploited in the wild
- Confirmed by CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2021-11-03 — including use in ransomware campaigns. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2022-05-03.
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA (KEV catalog and SSVC triage) for CVE-2018-13379.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2018-13379 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 ≥ 90% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Description
An Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory ("Path Traversal") in Fortinet FortiOS 6.0.0 to 6.0.4, 5.6.3 to 5.6.7 and 5.4.6 to 5.4.12 and FortiProxy 2.0.0, 1.2.0 to 1.2.8, 1.1.0 to 1.1.6, 1.0.0 to 1.0.7 under SSL VPN web portal allows an unauthenticated attacker to download system files via special crafted HTTP resource requests.
Affected Products
fortiosfortinetfortiproxyfortinetResearch use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Fortinet FortiOS 5.6.3 - 5.6.7 / FortiOS 6.0.0 - 6.0.4 - Credentials Disclosure
by Carlos E. Vieira · Aug 19, 2019
Fortinet FortiOS 5.6.3 - 5.6.7 / FortiOS 6.0.0 - 6.0.4 - Credentials Disclosure (Metasploit)
by Carlos E. Vieira · Aug 19, 2019
Detection & mitigation playbook
VulnerabilityDetect
Identify every host running the affected component and compare the installed build against the fixed version below — for source-built or distro-packaged software the version string, not a lockfile, is the source of truth (`dpkg -l`, `rpm -q`, or the binary's own `--version`).
Remediation status
No fixed release is recorded for CVE-2018-13379 yet. Track the upstream advisory, and apply the exposure-reduction steps below in the meantime.
Mitigate without a patch
Resolve every user-supplied path to its canonical form and reject anything that escapes the intended directory, and run the component under an account that has no read or write access outside the directory it legitimately serves.
How to detect CVE-2018-13379
A community-maintained Nuclei template exists for this CVE. You can scan for it directly:
nuclei -id cve-2018-13379 -u https://target- Template
- Fortinet FortiOS - Credentials Disclosure
- Severity
- critical
- Impact
- An attacker can obtain sensitive information such as usernames and passwords.
- Remediation
- Apply the necessary patches or updates provided by Fortinet to fix the vulnerability.
Template by ProjectDiscovery nuclei-templates (organiccrap), MIT licensed. View the full template. Scan only systems you are authorised to test.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2018-13379 in your dependencies?
Find it across , including transitive dependencies.