Assessment
Why it matters
CISA lists this vulnerability as known to be exploited; exploitation is confirmed; EPSS is 46.4%; technical severity is CVSS 6.1.
An XSS (Cross Site Scripting) vulnerability was found in HelpSystems Cobalt Strike through 4.7 that allowed a remote attacker to execute HTML on the Cobalt Strike teamserver. To exploit the vulnerability, one must first inspect a Cobalt Strike payload, and then modify the username field in the payload (or create a new payload with the extracted information and then modify that username field to be malformed).
Who should care
- Teams operating Cobalt Strike
- Vulnerability and exposure management teams
- Security operations teams monitoring exploitation activity
Response plan
What I would do
- Confirm whether Cobalt Strike is present in the environment.
- Identify affected versions and establish whether vulnerable services are exposed or reachable.
- Vendor advisory from www.cobaltstrike.com
- Review relevant security telemetry for evidence of attempted or successful exploitation.
- Document the remediation decision and track it to verified completion.
Treatment intelligence
Remediation intelligence
Vendor sources are listed before government and third-party guidance. Confirm product applicability and change prerequisites before deployment.
Verification noteAutomated link verification has not completed for this guidance yet.
Technical details
- CVSS vector
- CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N
- CWE
- CWE-20
- Affected versions
- Fortra Cobalt Strike; Helpsystems Cobalt Strike (End Excluding 4.7.1)
- Fixed versions
- Helpsystems Cobalt Strike (Fixed from 4.7.1)
- Published
- 21 September 2022
- Attack vector
- Network
- Privileges required
- None
- User interaction
- Required
Signal timeline
- CVE published
- Added to CISA KEV
- Latest EPSS score: 46.4%
- Signal calculated at 75