CVE-2022-1388
CRITICALCVE-2022-1388 is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.8) Missing Authentication vulnerability. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2022-05-10) 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.
On F5 BIG-IP 16.1.x versions prior to 16.1.2.2, 15.1.x versions prior to 15.1.5.1, 14.1.x versions prior to 14.1.4.6, 13.1.x versions prior to 13.1.5, and all 12.1.x and 11.6.x versions,…
Exploitation Status
Actively exploited in the wild
- Confirmed by CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2022-05-10 — including use in ransomware campaigns. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2022-05-31.
- 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-2022-1388.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2022-1388 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 394,803 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the ≥ 90% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Description
On F5 BIG-IP 16.1.x versions prior to 16.1.2.2, 15.1.x versions prior to 15.1.5.1, 14.1.x versions prior to 14.1.4.6, 13.1.x versions prior to 13.1.5, and all 12.1.x and 11.6.x versions, undisclosed requests may bypass iControl REST authentication. Note: Software versions which have reached End of Technical Support (EoTS) are not evaluated
Affected Products
big-ip access policy managerf5big-ip advanced firewall managerf5big-ip analyticsf5big-ip application acceleration managerf5big-ip application security managerf5big-ip domain name systemf5Research use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
F5 BIG-IP 16.0.x - Remote Code Execution (RCE)
by Yesith Alvarez · May 12, 2022
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-2022-1388 yet. Track the upstream advisory, and apply the exposure-reduction steps below in the meantime.
Mitigate without a patch
Put an independent control in front of the weakness: restrict the affected endpoint or interface to trusted networks, require an additional authentication factor or proxy-level check, and invalidate existing sessions and credentials in case the flaw has already been used.
How to detect CVE-2022-1388
A community-maintained Nuclei template exists for this CVE. You can scan for it directly:
nuclei -id cve-2022-1388 -u https://target- Template
- F5 BIG-IP iControl - REST Auth Bypass RCE
- Severity
- critical
- Impact
- Successful exploitation of this vulnerability could allow an attacker to bypass authentication and execute arbitrary code on the affected system.
- Remediation
- Apply the necessary security patches or updates provided by F5 Networks to mitigate this vulnerability.
Template by ProjectDiscovery nuclei-templates (dwisiswant0, Ph33r), MIT licensed. View the full template. Scan only systems you are authorised to test.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2022-1388 in your dependencies?
Find it across , including transitive dependencies.