Fortra warns of new critical GoAnywhere MFT auth bypass, patch now

Fortra is warning of a new authentication bypass vulnerability impacting GoAnywhere MFT (Managed File Transfer) versions before 7.4.1 that allows an attacker to create a new admin user. GoAnywhere MFT is used by organizations worldwide to secure transfer files with customers and business partners. It supports secure encryption protocols, automation, centralized control, and various logging and reporting tools that aid in legal compliance and auditing. The newly disclosed flaw is tracked as CVE-2024-0204 and is rated critical with a CVSS v3.1 score of 9.8 as it is remotely exploitable, allowing an unauthorized user to create admin users via the product’s administration portal. Creating arbitrary accounts with administrative privileges can lead to a complete device takeover. In the case of Go Anywhere MFT, that would allow attackers to access sensitive data, introduce malware, and potentially enable further attacks within the network. The flaw impacts Fortra GoAnywhere MFT 6.x from 6.0.1 and Fortra GoAnywhere MFT 7.4.0 and earlier and was fixed in GoAnywhere MFT 7.4.1, released on December 7, 2023. Fortra advises all users to install the latest update (currently 7.4.1) to fix the vulnerability. Fortra also provides the following two manual mitigation pathways in the advisory: One thing to note is that CVE-2024-0204 was discovered on December 1, 2023, by Mohammed Eldeeb and Islam Elrfai from Spark Engineering Consultants. That said, significant time has passed since the initial...