CVE-2018-19410
CRITICALCVE-2018-19410 is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.8) vulnerability. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2025-02-04) — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.
PRTG Network Monitor before 18.2.40.1683 allows remote unauthenticated attackers to create users with read-write privileges (including administrator). A remote unauthenticated user…
Exploitation Status
Actively exploited in the wild
- Confirmed by CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2025-02-04. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2025-02-25.
- 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-2018-19410.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2018-19410 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
PRTG Network Monitor before 18.2.40.1683 allows remote unauthenticated attackers to create users with read-write privileges (including administrator). A remote unauthenticated user can craft an HTTP request and override attributes of the 'include' directive in /public/login.htm and perform a Local File Inclusion attack, by including /api/addusers and executing it. By providing the 'id' and 'users' parameters, an unauthenticated attacker can create a user with read-write privileges (including administrator).
Affected Products
prtg network monitorpaesslerResearch use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
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-2018-19410 yet. Track the upstream advisory, and apply the exposure-reduction steps 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.
How to detect CVE-2018-19410
A community-maintained Nuclei template exists for this CVE. You can scan for it directly:
nuclei -id cve-2018-19410 -u https://target- Template
- PRTG Network Monitor - Local File Inclusion
- Severity
- critical
- Impact
- Unauthenticated attackers can create administrator users with full privileges via local file inclusion, leading to complete compromise of the monitoring system and access to network infrastructure.
- Remediation
- Upgrade to PRTG Network Monitor version 18.2.40.1683 or later and ensure the /public directory is properly secured.
Template by ProjectDiscovery nuclei-templates (DhiyaneshDK), MIT licensed. View the full template. Scan only systems you are authorised to test.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2018-19410 in your dependencies?
Find it across , including transitive dependencies.