Most internet-exposed Cacti servers exposed to hacking

Most internet-exposed Cacti servers are vulnerable to the critical vulnerability CVE-2022-46169 which is actively exploited in the wild.

Cacti is an open-source platform that provides a robust and extensible operational monitoring and fault management framework for users.

Researchers from Censys discovered that the majority of internet-exposed Cacti servers are vulnerable to the critical flaw CVE-2022-46169 which is under active exploitation in the wild.

The flaw is a command injection vulnerability that can be exploited by an unauthenticated user to execute arbitrary code on a server running Cacti, if a specific data source was selected for any monitored device. The flaw resides in the `remote_agent.php` file that can be accessed by any unauthenticated user. The vulnerability affects versions 1.2.22 and below.

“A command injection vulnerability allows an unauthenticated user to execute arbitrary code on a server running Cacti, if a specific data source was selected for any monitored device.” reads the advisory.

The researcher noticed that most of the Cacti servers are running outdated versions, with only 26 servers are running a patched version of Cacti (1.2.23 and 1.3.0).

Most hosts running Cacti are in Brazil (20.54%), followed by Indonesia (12.37%) and the United States (3.95%).

Country	hosts
Brazil	1,320	20.54%
Indonesia	795	12.37%
United States	254	3.95%
China	193	3.0%
Bangladesh	104	1.62%
Russia	99	1.54%
Ukraine	93	1.45%
Philippines	70	1.09%
Thailand	65	1.01%
United Kingdom	56	0.87%

The vulnerability was discovered by Sonarsource researchers, who provided details about the issue and published a video PoC demonstrating the exploitation of a server running a vulnerable version of Cacti:

Shadowserver researchers reported that threat actors are actively exploiting the issue since January 3rd, 2023, in some attacks attackers triggered the issue to deploy malware on the vulnerable hosts.

GreyNoise experts also observed attacks in the wild exploiting the flaw.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, CVE-2022-46169)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.