Two-Factor Authentication Bypass Flaw Could Affect Over 70 Million Domains
San Antonio, TX – November 24, 2020 – Digital Defense, Inc., a leader in vulnerability and threat management solutions, today announced that its Vulnerability Research Team (VRT) uncovered a previously undisclosed vulnerability affecting the cPanel & WebHost Manager (WHM) web hosting platform. cPanel &WHM version 11.90.0.5 (90.0 Build 5) exhibits a two-factor authentication bypass flaw, vulnerable to brute force attack, resulting in a scenario where an attacker with knowledge of or access to valid credentials could bypass two-factor authentication protections on an account. Digital Defense’s internal testing demonstrated that an attack can be accomplished in minutes.
“Our standard practice is to work in tandem with organizations on a coordinated disclosure effort to facilitate a prompt resolution to a vulnerability. The Digital Defense VRT reached out to cPanel who worked diligently on a patch. We will continue outreach to customers ensuring they are aware and able to take action to mitigate any potential risk introduced by the vulnerability,” states Mike Cotton, senior vice president of engineering at Digital Defense."
cPanel & WHM is a suite of tools built for Linux OS that allows hosting providers and users the ability to automate server management and web hosting tasks while simplifying the process of website hosting for the end user. Serving the global hosting community for over 20 years, cPanel touts having over 70 million domains launched on servers using cPanel & WHM to date.
What You Can Do
cPanel’s recent advisory provides more details about the updates that have been released, which should be applied: https://news.cpanel.com/cpanel-tsr-2020-0007-full-disclosure/. For additional information, customers should contact cPanel directly.
Digital Defense Research Methodology and Practices
The Digital Defense VRT regularly works with organizations promoting the responsible disclosure of zero-day vulnerabilities. The expertise of the VRT, when coupled with the company’s next generation hybrid cloud platform, Fortra Vulnerability Management, enables early detection capabilities. When zero-days are discovered and internally validated, the VRT immediately contacts the affected vendor to notify the organization of the new finding(s) and assists, where possible, with the vendor’s remediation actions.
To view Digital Defense’s zero-day advisories to date, please visit: https://www.digitaldefense.com/vulnerability-research/
About Digital Defense
Our SaaS platform supports Fortra Vulnerability Management, Web Application Scanning, and Active Threat Sweep that together provide:
- Asset discovery and tracking
- OS and web application risk assessment
- Targeted malware threat assessment
- Machine learning features that leverage threat intelligence
- Agentless & agent-based scanning
- Penetration testing for networks, mobile applications, and web applications
- Compliance management. One of the world’s longest tenured PCI-Approved Scanning Vendors
Our SaaS platform virtually eliminates false-positives associated with legacy vulnerability management solutions, while also automating the tracking of dynamic and transient assets and prioritizing results based on business criticality.