CVE-2019-16278 — Nostromo Nhttpd
CRITICALCVE-2019-16278 is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.8) Path Traversal vulnerability in nazgul nostromo nhttpd. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2024-11-07) — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.
Directory Traversal in the function http_verify in nostromo nhttpd through 1.9.6 allows an attacker to achieve remote code execution via a crafted HTTP request.
Exploitation Status
Actively exploited in the wild
- Confirmed by CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2024-11-07. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2024-11-28.
- 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-2019-16278.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2019-16278 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
Directory Traversal in the function http_verify in nostromo nhttpd through 1.9.6 allows an attacker to achieve remote code execution via a crafted HTTP request.
Affected Products
nostromo nhttpdnazgulResearch use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
nostromo 1.9.6 - Remote Code Execution
by Kr0ff · Jan 1, 2020
Nostromo - Directory Traversal Remote Command Execution (Metasploit)
by Metasploit · Nov 1, 2019
Detection & mitigation playbook
Vendor / applianceDetect
Inventory every nazgul nostromo nhttpd deployment and check each version against the affected-products list above.
Remediation status
No patch has shipped for CVE-2019-16278 yet — track the nazgul nostromo nhttpd advisory for a fixed release and apply the workarounds 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. Alongside that, restrict the management interface to trusted networks and apply the vendor's recommended configuration mitigations.
How to detect CVE-2019-16278
A community-maintained Nuclei template exists for this CVE. You can scan for it directly:
nuclei -id cve-2019-16278 -u https://target- Template
- nostromo 1.9.6 - Remote Code Execution
- Severity
- critical
- Impact
- Successful exploitation of this vulnerability allows an attacker to execute arbitrary code on the target system.
- Remediation
- Upgrade to a patched version of nostromo web server (1.9.7 or later) or apply the vendor-supplied patch.
Template by ProjectDiscovery nuclei-templates (pikpikcu), MIT licensed. View the full template. Scan only systems you are authorised to test.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2019-16278 being exploited in your environment?
Detect and block the exploit chain at execution, on systems you cannot patch yet.