A vital security vulnerability has been disclosed within the Erlang/Open Telecom Platform (OTP) SSH implementation that might allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code sans any authentication below sure circumstances.
The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-32433, has been given the utmost CVSS rating of 10.0.
“The vulnerability permits an attacker with community entry to an Erlang/OTP SSH server to execute arbitrary code with out prior authentication,” Ruhr College Bochum researchers Fabian Bäumer, Marcus Brinkmann, Marcel Maehren, and Jörg Schwenk stated.
The difficulty stems from improper dealing with of SSH protocol messages that primarily allow an attacker to ship connection protocol messages previous to authentication. Profitable exploitation of the shortcomings may lead to arbitrary code execution within the context of the SSH daemon.
Additional exacerbating the chance, if the daemon course of is operating as root, it permits the attacker to have full management of the machine, in flip, paving the way in which for unauthorized entry to and manipulation of delicate knowledge or denial-of-service (DoS).
All customers operating an SSH server based mostly on the Erlang/OTP SSH library are probably affected by CVE-2025-32433. It is really helpful to replace to variations OTP-27.3.3, OTP-26.2.5.11, and OTP-25.3.2.20. As short-term workarounds, entry to susceptible SSH servers might be prevented utilizing acceptable firewall guidelines.
In an announcement shared with The Hacker Information, Mayuresh Dani, supervisor of security analysis at Qualys, described the vulnerability as extraordinarily vital and that it might permit a menace actor to carry out actions similar to putting in ransomware or siphoning off delicate knowledge.
“Erlang is regularly discovered put in on high-availability programs attributable to its sturdy and concurrent processing assist,” Dani stated. “A majority of Cisco and Ericsson gadgets run Erlang.”
“Any service utilizing Erlang/OTP’s SSH library for distant entry similar to these utilized in OT/IoT gadgets, edge computing gadgets are vulnerable to exploitation. Upgrading to the fastened Erlang/OTP or vendor-supported variations will remediate the vulnerability. Ought to organizations want extra time to put in upgrades, they need to limit SSH port entry to licensed customers alone.”
