Privilege escalation in Tenable Nessus

CVE-2023-0524

As part of our Security Development Lifecycle, a potential privilege escalation issue was identified internally. This could allow a malicious actor with sufficient permissions to modify environment variables and abuse an impacted plugin in order to escalate privileges. We have resolved the issue and also made several defense-in-depth fixes alongside. While the probability of successful exploitation is low, Tenable is committed to securing our customers’ environments and our products. The updates have been distributed via the Tenable plugin feed in feed serial numbers equal to or greater than #202212212055.

Vulnerability class: Privilege Escalation

EPSS: 0.006 (47.0th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 8.8 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H.

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2023-0524?
CVE-2023-0524 is a high-severity vulnerability in Tenable Nessus, classified under Improper Privilege Management. CVSS score: 8.8/10. Published 2023-02-01.
How severe is CVE-2023-0524?
High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 8.8 out of 10.