CVE-2023-29298 — Coldfusion
HIGHCVE-2023-29298 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) CWE-284 vulnerability in adobe coldfusion. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2023-07-20) — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.
Adobe ColdFusion versions 2018u16 (and earlier), 2021u6 (and earlier) and 2023.0.0.330468 (and earlier) are affected by an Improper Access Control vulnerability that could result in…
Exploitation Status
Actively exploited in the wild
- Confirmed by CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2023-07-20. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2023-08-10.
- 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-2023-29298.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2023-29298 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
Adobe ColdFusion versions 2018u16 (and earlier), 2021u6 (and earlier) and 2023.0.0.330468 (and earlier) are affected by an Improper Access Control vulnerability that could result in a Security feature bypass. An attacker could leverage this vulnerability to access the administration CFM and CFC endpoints. Exploitation of this issue does not require user interaction.
Affected Products
coldfusionadobeResearch 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
Vendor / applianceDetect
Inventory every adobe coldfusion deployment and check each version against the affected-products list above.
Remediation status
No patch has shipped for CVE-2023-29298 yet — track the adobe coldfusion advisory for a fixed release and apply the workarounds 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. Alongside that, restrict the management interface to trusted networks and apply the vendor's recommended configuration mitigations.
How to detect CVE-2023-29298
A community-maintained Nuclei template exists for this CVE. You can scan for it directly:
nuclei -id cve-2023-29298 -u https://target- Template
- Adobe ColdFusion - Access Control Bypass
- Severity
- high
- Impact
- Successful exploitation of this vulnerability could allow an attacker to bypass access controls and gain unauthorized access to sensitive information or perform unauthorized actions.
- Remediation
- Apply the latest security patches or updates provided by Adobe to fix the access control bypass vulnerability.
Template by ProjectDiscovery nuclei-templates (rootxharsh, iamnoooob, DhiyaneshDK), MIT licensed. View the full template. Scan only systems you are authorised to test.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2023-29298 being exploited in your environment?
Detect and block the exploit chain at execution, on systems you cannot patch yet.