Security News > 2024 > May > New BIG-IP Next Central Manager bugs allow device takeover
F5 has fixed two high-severity BIG-IP Next Central Manager vulnerabilities, which can be exploited to gain admin control and create hidden rogue accounts on any managed assets.
Next Central Manager allows administrators to control on-premises or cloud BIG-IP Next instances and services via a unified management user interface.
The flaws are an SQL injection vulnerability and an OData injection vulnerability found in the BIG-IP Next Central Manager API that would allow unauthenticated attackers to execute malicious SQL statements on unpatched devices remotely.
"The management console of the Central Manager can be remotely exploited by any attacker able to access the administrative UI via CVE 2024-21793 or CVE 2024-26026. This would result in full administrative control of the manager itself," Eclypsium says.
"Attackers can then take advantage of the other vulnerabilities to create new accounts on any BIG-IP Next asset managed by the Central Manager. Notably, these new malicious accounts would not be visible from the Central Manager itself."
According to F5's recommendations, administrators who can't immediately install today's security updates should restrict Next Central Manager access to trusted users over a secure network to mitigate attack risks.