CVE-2025-31161

CrushFTP: Authentication Bypass

As of , CVE-2025-31161 in CrushFTP is on CISA's list of exploited vulnerabilities: CISA listed it on . Our patch-first group: Patch this week.

Exploited
Yes: CISA listed it on 7 April 2025
US federal deadline
28 April 202521 days after CISA listed it. US federal civilian agencies must fix it by then.
Used in ransomware campaigns
KnownCISA changed it from Unknown to Known on 9 April 2025.
EPSS score
0.99Higher than 99% of the CVEs EPSS scores. EPSS estimates the chance of exploitation activity in the next 30 days.
Public exploit
1 Exploit-DB entry
Fix
Vendor advice: www.crushftp.comLinks below, from CISA's entry.

What CISA says to do

Apply mitigations per vendor instructions, follow applicable BOD 22-01 guidance for cloud services, or discontinue use of the product if mitigations are unavailable.

CISA's required action

What the flaw is

CrushFTP contains an authentication bypass vulnerability in the HTTP authorization header that allows a remote unauthenticated attacker to authenticate to any known or guessable user account (e.g., crushadmin), potentially leading to a full compromise.

CISA's description

CrushFTP 10 before 10.8.4 and 11 before 11.3.1 allows authentication bypass and takeover of the crushadmin account (unless a DMZ proxy instance is used), as exploited in the wild in March and April 2025, aka "Unauthenticated HTTP(S) port access." A race condition exists in the AWS4-HMAC (compatible with S3) authorization method of the HTTP component of the FTP server. The server first verifies the existence of the user by performing a call to login_user_pass() with no password requirement. This will authenticate the session through the HMAC verification process and up until the server checks for user verification once more. The vulnerability can be further stabilized, eliminating the need for successfully triggering a race condition, by sending a mangled AWS4-HMAC header. By providing only the username and a following slash (/), the server will successfully find a username, which triggers the successful anypass authentication process, but the server will fail to find the expected SignedHeaders entry, resulting in an index-out-of-bounds error that stops the code from reaching the session cleanup. Together, these issues make it trivial to authenticate as any known or guessable user (e.g., crushadmin), and can lead to a full compromise of the system by obtaining an administrative account.

The CVE record's description, from mitre

CVE published
3 April 2025
Assigned by
mitre
CVSS
9.8 Critical (CVSS 3.1, from the CNA)
CWE-305
Authentication Bypass by Primary Weakness
CISA SSVC, exploitation
active
CISA SSVC, automatable
yes
CISA SSVC, technical impact
total

Timeline

  1. The CVE record was published.
  2. CISA added it to its list of exploited vulnerabilities.
  3. CISA changed its entry. Ransomware use: Unknown to Known.
  4. The US federal deadline to fix it.
  5. Exploit-DB published an exploit (EDB-ID 52295).

Public exploits

Facts from Metasploit's module list and Exploit-DB's index; we never copy exploit code.

CrushFTP: other exploited entries

VulnerabilityProductOur groupListedDeadlineEPSS
CVE-2024-4040VFS Sandbox EscapeCrushFTP CrushFTPPatch this weekMetasploit module; EPSS 0.990.99
CVE-2025-54309Unprotected Alternate ChannelCrushFTP CrushFTPPatch this weekEPSS 0.950.95

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