Nakivo backup flaw still present on some systems months after firms’ ‘silent patch’, researchers claim

Over 200 vulnerable internet-facing Nakivo backup and replication instances have been identified months after the firm silently patched a security flaw without publicly disclosing the issue.

Security researchers at watchTowr recently published a report detailing their discovery of an arbitrary file read vulnerability in Nakivo’s central management solution.

The report noted that, if exploited, the flaw could enable an attacker to steal backups and credentials stored in the target Nakivo instance as well as unlock entire infrastructure environments.

According to watchTowr, the issue affected version 10.11.3.86570 of Nakivo's central management HTTP interface, Director, but warned it had not checked earlier versions of the software.

WatchTowr said upon discovering the vulnerability – tracked as CVE-2024-48248 – in September 2024 it tried to disclose it to Nakivo several times via email but did not receive a response until 29th October.

On November 4th, researchers noticed that Nakivo had fixed the vulnerability in a new patch without publicly acknowledging the issue with an advisory. The watchTowr team themselves had applied for a CVE number for the flaw.

Nakivo made no mention of the vulnerability in the release notes, leading watchTowr to assume that it had reached out to affected customers individually.

“We would be shocked if a vendor tried to sweep a vulnerability this serious under a rug, and knowingly give their customers a misplaced sense of security,” the report explained.

“We’re not assuming or suggesting here that NAKIVO have responded badly - we of course assume that they contacted all their customers under NDA, and encouraged them quietly to patch, to avoid leaving their customers unknowingly vulnerable.”

Some Nakivo customers remain vulnerable – patch now

A number of vulnerable instances of Nakivo remain online, however, indicating that some customers have not yet updated their systems.

On February 28th, cybersecurity nonprofit Shadowserver warned that scans revealed over 200 Nakivo instances were still vulnerable to the issue, three months after Nakivo patched and presumably reached out to impacted customers.

Shadowserver urged any remaining customers with vulnerable instances of Nakivo to patch now and referred them to watchTowr’s report.

WatchTowr have also published a Detection Artifact Generator that can be used as an unofficial Nakivo customer support tool on GitHub to help users gauge the security of their Nakivo appliances.

Why backups are a prime target for hackers

Backup solutions are popular targets for cyber criminals due to their role in safeguarding critical data.

WatchTowr noted this fact, highlighting backup giant Veeam’s frequent appearances in CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerability (KEV) list.

It stressed, however, the importance of transparent and timely communication of security vulnerabilities in order to help customers mitigate risks as quickly as possible before attackers get to them.

“We’ve said time and time again that bugs, in some form or another, are an inescapable fact of life, and that a vendor's response to a bug is much more important than the presence of a defect itself.”

ITPro approached Nakivo for clarification on its engagement with customers over CVE-2024048248 but did not receive a response.

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