CrushFTP Authentication Bypass Vulnerability
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.
A remote attacker, without authentication, can achieve full data confidentiality loss, arbitrary modification of data, complete denial of service or system unavailability. CISA has confirmed use of this vulnerability in known ransomware campaigns — treat as high priority for remediation. Federal agencies are required to remediate by 2025-04-28 under CISA BOD 22-01.
This is a Software Vulnerability (CWE-305) (CWE-305) vulnerability in CrushFTP CrushFTP. 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. Exploitation requires remote network access, low attack complexity, no authentication required, and no user interaction required.
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Phishing link
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Malicious file
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Server compromised
Probably yes if any of these apply:
Used in known ransomware campaigns. Threat-research write-up: https://attackerkb.com/topics/k0EgiL9Psz/cve-2025-2825/rapid7-analysis
Manual remediation steps
Apply the Vendor Patch
This vulnerability is in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog — apply the vendor's security update as soon as possible.
CISA required action: Apply mitigations per vendor instructions, follow applicable BOD 22-01 guidance for cloud services, or discontinue use of the product if mitigations are unavailable.
References
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References