Skip to content

FortiOS / FortiProxy / FortiSwitchManager – Authentication Bypass (CVE-2022-40684)

  • Resources
  • Glossary
  • FortiOS / FortiProxy / FortiSwitchManager – Authentication Bypass (CVE-2022-40684)

We would like to bring to your attention a newly discovered authentication bypass vulnerability within FortiOS, FortiProxy and FortiSwitchManager. This vulnerability is currently being actively exploited.

An authentication bypass has been identified using an alternate path or channel vulnerability [CWE-288] in FortiOS, FortiProxy and FortiSwitchManager which allows an unauthenticated attacker to perform operations on the administrative interface via specially crafted HTTP or HTTPS requests. The vulnerability has been issued the identifier CVE-2022-40684 and has been given a CVSS score of 9.6.

Affected Products

  • FortiOS version 7.2.0 through 7.2.1

  • FortiOS version 7.0.0 through 7.0.6

  • FortiProxy version 7.2.0

  • FortiProxy version 7.0.0

  • FortiSwitchManager version 7.2.0

  • FortiSwitchManager version 7.0.0

Detection

The current version of FortiOS / FortiGate can be checked with the following command, and should be checked against the known affected products above:

get system status

Additional Fortinet recommend to check the device’s log for the following strings to help detected compromised devices:

  • user=”Local_Process_Access”

  • user_interface=”Node.js”

  • user_interface=”Report Runner”

Exploited hosts may show records for these strings.

Remediation

Whilst a workaround has been provided, current best guidance for remediating this issue to update to an unaffected version.

  • FortiOS should be updated to version 7.2.2 or above and version 7.0.7 or above.

  • FortiProxy should be updated to version 7.2.1 or above and version 7.0.7 or above.

  • FortiSwitchManager should be updated to version 7.2.1 or above.

References

Stencil silhouette of a child walking along a concrete wall beside a gap in a chain-link fence, symbolizing a gap in AI agent governance and containment boundaries

You can’t secure what you can’t see.

OpenAI’s own agent breached Hugging Face’s infrastructure without ever going rogue. It just stayed on-task and found the gaps in its containment. That’s the clearest argument…
Las Vegas def con

Don’t become the demo: a guide to surviving summer hacker camp

Hacker Summer Camp brings 30,000+ security minds to Las Vegas, and with them, plenty of ways to become an unintended demo. CovertSwarm’s COO shares his field-tested…

When the API Lies – How RAID Discovered a Critical Privilege Escalation by Reading JavaScript

A privilege escalation vulnerability hid behind a broken endpoint and a misleading error message. Here’s how RAID’s agentic system decompiled the frontend JavaScript to find the…