CVE intelligence and bounded remediation
CVE-2018-20193 — Pulsesecure Secure Access Series Ssl Vpn Sa-4000 security vulnerability
Certain Secure Access SA Series SSL VPN products (originally developed by Juniper Networks but now sold and supported by Pulse Secure, LLC) allow privilege escalation, as demonstrated by Secure Access SSL VPN SA-4000 5.1R5 (build 9627) 4.2 Release (build 7631). This occurs because appropriate controls are not performed. Specifically, it is possible for a readonly user to change the administrator user password by making a local copy of the /dana-admin/user/update.cgi page, changing the "user" value, and saving the changes.
- Severity
- High
- CVSS
- 8.8 (3.0)
- Published
- 2018-12-21
- CISA KEV
- Not currently listed
- Ecosystem
- software/application
- Weaknesses
- CWE-269
Affected products
- pulsesecure / secure_access_series_ssl_vpn_sa-4000 / 4.2
- pulsesecure / secure_access_series_ssl_vpn_sa-4000 / 5.1r5
Matched remediation archetype
Privilege escalation and unsafe privilege management
This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.
Check exposure
- Map service accounts, operating-system identities, roles, capabilities, impersonation, set-user transitions, and administrative helper paths.
- Determine whether untrusted users or lower-privilege processes can reach the affected transition or modify inputs it trusts.
- Review file, socket, registry, device, job, container, and cloud-role permissions used before and after privilege changes.
Remediate safely
- Apply the supported fix and redesign privileged operations as a minimal, authenticated, allowlisted interface.
- Drop privileges before processing untrusted input, verify the drop succeeds, and remove unnecessary roles, capabilities, and write permissions.
- Validate ownership and permissions at time of use and add explicit lower-to-higher privilege boundary tests.
Authoritative sources
Complete CVE record and remediation plan
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