CVE-2024-32656 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.8) CWE-862 vulnerability in io.antmedia:ant-media-server. A fix is available for io.antmedia:ant-media-server — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Ant Media Server vulnerable to local privilege escalation
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2024-32656.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2024-32656 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 378,567 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
io.antmedia:ant-media-serverReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Maven packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Impact
We have identified a local privilege escalation vulnerability in Ant Media Server which allows any unprivileged operating system user account to escalate privileges to the root user account on the system. This vulnerability arises from Ant Media Server running with Java Management Extensions (JMX) enabled and authentication disabled on localhost on port 5599/TCP. This vulnerability is nearly identical to the local privilege escalation vulnerability CVE-2023-26269 identified in Apache James. Any unprivileged operating system user can connect to the JMX service running on port 5599/TCP on localhost and leverage the MLet Bean within JMX to load a remote MBean from an attacker-controlled server. This allows an attacker to execute arbitrary code within the Java process run by Ant Media Server and execute code within the context of the “antmedia” service account on the system.
Patches
2.9.0
Workarounds
Remote the following parameters from antmedia.service file
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=false -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=5599 -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.local.only=true -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.host=127.0.0.1 -Djava.rmi.server.hostname=127.0.0.1 -Djava.rmi.server.useLocalHostname=true -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.rmi.port=5599
Thank you Adam Crosser for reporting the issue Local Privilege Escalation via Unauthenticated JMX Remote Management Interface (1).pdf
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| ☕Maven | io.antmedia:ant-media-server | ≥ 2.6.0&&< 2.9.0 | 2.9.0io.antmedia:ant-media-server:2.9.0 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for io.antmedia:ant-media-server, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update io.antmedia:ant-media-server to 2.9.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2024-32656 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
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 O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2024-32656 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2024-32656. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2024-32656 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2024-32656 across Maven dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.