Emergency patch for ColdFusion zero-day

Adobe has issued an out-of-cycle software patch for its ColdFusion software after security researchers found a previous patch was incomplete, and being exploited in the wild.

The story began with a Rapid7 disclosure that included CVE-2023-29298, an access control bug that gave attackers administration access to the ColdFusion Markup (CFM) and ColdFusion Component (CFC) endpoints.

Today’s patches fix access control flaws: CVE-2023-38204 is rated 9.8 on the CVSS but hasn’t been exploited, CVE-2023-38205 rates at 7.8 and has been exploited, and CVE-2023-38206, which is rated 5.3.

“Adobe is aware that CVE-2023-38205 has been exploited in the wild in limited attacks targeting Adobe ColdFusion,” the Adobe advisory stated.

CVE-2023-38205, Rapid7 said, was needed because a fix published earlier this month was incomplete: “Rapid7 researchers determined on Monday, July 17 that the fix Adobe provided for CVE-2023-29298 on July 11 is incomplete, and that a trivially modified exploit still works against the latest version of ColdFusion,” the company said.

“Adobe released a fix for the patch bypass of CVE-2023-29298 on July 19 and assigned it CVE-2023-38205.

“Rapid7 has confirmed the new patch works.”

Rapid7’s post identifies three IP addresses and two domains that are indicators of compromise.

About Author

AndyC

Andy Curtis is an award-winning security consultant, researcher and public speaker. He has been working in the computer security industry since the early 1990s, having been employed by state and federal government, leading healthcare and banking providers across three continents. He has given talks about computer security for some of the world’s largest companies, worked with law enforcement agencies on investigations into hacking groups, and is a regular voice on TV and radio explaining IT security threats.

See author's posts