The makers of MOVEit have patched another major security flaw

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The WS_FTP Server product was found to be vulnerable in multiple ways

A stylized depiction of a padlocked WiFi symbol sitting in the centre of an interlocking vault.

The company behind the now-famous (for all the wrong reasons) MOVEit managed file transfer software has warned its clients that a different product - WS_FTP Server, also carries a couple of high-severity flaws that can be exploited in malware hacks. 

In an advisory, Progress said WS_FTP carried eight vulnerabilities, two of which were labeled as critical. One is tracked as CVE-2023-40044 (severity rating 10/10), while the other is tracked as CVE-2023-42657 (9.9/10). These vulnerabilities allow threat actors to run a range of malicious activities, including remote code execution.

"Attackers could also escape the context of the WS_FTP Server file structure and perform the same level of operations (delete, rename, rmdir, mkdir) on file and folder locations on the underlying operating system," Progress said in the advisory. 

Patching the flaw

The worst part is - these flaws don’t even require user interaction, as the company adds, "We have addressed the vulnerabilities above and the Progress WS_FTP team strongly recommends performing an upgrade."

"We do recommend upgrading to the most highest version which is 8.8.2. Upgrading to a patched release, using the full installer, is the only way to remediate this issue. There will be an outage to the system while the upgrade is running."

There is also a way to remove and disable the vulnerable WS_FTP Server Ad Hoc Transfer Module, for those who cannot patch right away, or don’t really use the service. The details can be found here. 

Progress is the company behind MOVEit, a managed file transfer solution that was compromised by ransomware actors Clop, resulting in a major data theft affecting more than 2,000 firms, so far. 

As for WS_FTP Server, we don’t know if the flaws were used by any hackers in the meantime, but the product was being used by “thousands” of IT teams, according to Progress.

Via BleepingComputer 

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Sead Fadilpašić

Sead is a seasoned freelance journalist based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He writes about IT (cloud, IoT, 5G, VPN) and cybersecurity (ransomware, data breaches, laws and regulations). In his career, spanning more than a decade, he’s written for numerous media outlets, including Al Jazeera Balkans. He’s also held several modules on content writing for Represent Communications.