CVE-2019-10068 — Xperience
CRITICALCVE-2019-10068 is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.8) Deserialization of Untrusted Data vulnerability in kentico xperience. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2022-03-25) — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. A fix is available — see the affected versions and patch details below.
An issue was discovered in Kentico 12.0.x before 12.0.15, 11.0.x before 11.0.48, 10.0.x before 10.0.52, and 9.x versions. Due to a failure to validate security headers, it was possible…
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-2019-10068.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2019-10068 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 issue was discovered in Kentico 12.0.x before 12.0.15, 11.0.x before 11.0.48, 10.0.x before 10.0.52, and 9.x versions. Due to a failure to validate security headers, it was possible for a specially crafted request to the staging service to bypass the initial authentication and proceed to deserialize user-controlled .NET object input. This deserialization then led to unauthenticated remote code execution on the server where the Kentico instance was hosted.
Affected Products
xperiencekenticoResearch use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
An issue was discovered in Kentico 12.0.x before 12.0.15, 11.0.x before …
An issue was discovered in Kentico 12.0.x before 12.0.15, 11.0.x before …
An issue was discovered in Kentico 12.0.x before 12.0.15, 11.0.x before …
An issue was discovered in Kentico 12.0.x before 12.0.15, 11.0.x before …
Detection & mitigation playbook
Vendor / applianceDetect
Inventory every kentico xperience deployment and check each version against the affected-products list above.
Fix
Apply the kentico xperience security patch or hotfix for CVE-2019-10068 on the affected version, following the vendor advisory for your exact build.
Workarounds
Do not deserialise data from untrusted sources: where the format allows it, restrict deserialisation to an explicit allowlist of expected types, and prefer a data-only format (JSON, Protobuf) over one that can reconstruct arbitrary objects until you can upgrade. Alongside that, restrict the management interface to trusted networks and apply the vendor's recommended configuration mitigations.
How to detect CVE-2019-10068
A community-maintained Nuclei template exists for this CVE. You can scan for it directly:
nuclei -id cve-2019-10068 -u https://target- Template
- Kentico CMS Insecure Deserialization Remote Code Execution
- Severity
- critical
- Impact
- Successful exploitation of this vulnerability can result in remote code execution, allowing an attacker to execute arbitrary code on the affected system.
- Remediation
- Apply the latest security patches and updates provided by Kentico CMS to mitigate this vulnerability.
Template by ProjectDiscovery nuclei-templates (davidmckennirey), MIT licensed. View the full template. Scan only systems you are authorised to test.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2019-10068 being exploited in your environment?
Detect and block the exploit chain at execution, on systems you cannot patch yet.