CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2020-12271 — Sophos SFOS SQL Injection Vulnerability

Critical CVSS 10 CISA KEV

A SQL injection issue was found in SFOS 17.0, 17.1, 17.5, and 18.0 before 2020-04-25 on Sophos XG Firewall devices, as exploited in the wild in April 2020. This affected devices configured with either the administration (HTTPS) service or the User Portal exposed on the WAN zone. A successful attack may have caused remote code execution that exfiltrated usernames and hashed passwords for the local device admin(s), portal admins, and user accounts used for remote access (but not external Active Directory or LDAP passwords)

Severity
Critical
CVSS
10 (3.0)
Published
2020-04-27
CISA KEV
Known exploited
Ecosystem
operating-system
Weaknesses
CWE-89

Affected products

  • sophos / sfos / 17.0
  • sophos / sfos / 17.1
  • sophos / sfos / 17.5
  • sophos / sfos / 18.0

Matched remediation archetype

SQL and data-query injection

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Check exposure

  • Trace request, message, file, and stored values into SQL, ORM query fragments, filters, sort expressions, and other data-query languages.
  • Inventory database roles, reachable schemas, multi-tenant boundaries, and whether stacked or administrative operations are enabled.
  • Check both direct queries and second-order use of previously stored values.

Remediate safely

  • Use parameterized queries or safe query builders for all values; map identifiers and operators through explicit allowlists.
  • Remove raw query concatenation and give the application account only the tables and operations it requires.
  • Update affected data-access components and add regression tests for query structure preservation with inert edge-case inputs.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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