Critical FortiOS RCE Vulnerabilitiy May Have Been Exploited In Various Attacks

Fortinet has acknowledged that a critical vulnerability in its FortiOS SSL VPN, which was recently patched, may have already been exploited in attacks targeting government, manufacturing, and critical infrastructure organizations. The flaw, identified as CVE-2023-27997 / FG-IR-23-097, enables remote code execution through a heap-based buffer overflow in FortiOS and FortiProxy SSL-VPN when exploited by unauthenticated attackers using specially crafted requests. Following a code audit prompted by a series of attacks exploiting the CVE-2022-42475 FortiOS SSL-VPN zero-day, the vulnerability was discovered, leading Fortinet to release security updates and advise immediate action for customers with SSL-VPN enabled, as more than 250,000 Fortigate firewalls are exposed on the Internet and likely vulnerable. Read more...