Threats / OSGeo / CVE-2024-36401
CVE-2024-36401
· EUVD no mirror located
· GCVE no mirror located
Verified 2026-09-19
OSGeo GeoServer vulnerability
OSGeo GeoServer improperly neutralizes directives in dynamically evaluated code, allowing unauthenticated remote code execution through unsafe XPath expression evaluation of property names.
Verdict
Today item — known-exploited.
Unauthenticated attackers can exploit unsafe XPath evaluation in GeoServer to execute arbitrary code. The high EPSS score and active exploitation in the wild indicate immediate risk to exposed instances regardless of authentication posture.
CISA KEV Yes · 2024-07-155EPSS 0.99813 (verify live)6Exploit Weaponized · public PoC7CVSS 9.83CISA SSVC Exploitation: active · Automatable: yes · Impact: total4
01
Is it exploitable?
— the evidence, ranked above the scoreExploit available
Fully weaponized — public exploit code is cataloged for this vulnerability.We link the existence of the exploit; we do not host or redistribute payloads.
Reported exploitation
919 independent public reports of in-the-wild exploitation are cataloged.Distinct reporting sources (vendor, incident response, government); open them for the underlying claims.
Exploited in the wild
Listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2024-07-15).
Probability (EPSS)
EPSS 0.99813 — modeled likelihood of exploitation activity.EPSS is a daily-changing model output — open the source for today's value.
Severity / affected
CVSS 9.8 (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H) · Affected: OSGeo, GeoServer. Confirm exact fixed builds in the vendor advisory.CVSS — CNA-assigned (CVE.org), version 3.1, set at disclosure.
Weakness (CWE)
Mapped to CWE-95 Eval Injection — weakness family: Injection.CWE — CNA-assigned (CVE.org); the weakness class drives how the flaw is exploited.
CISA SSVC (triage disposition)
Exploitation: active · Automatable: yes · Technical Impact: totalCISA's own stakeholder-specific triage inputs, published in the CVE record (CISA Coordinator role). NOTE: this is CISA's three decision points; the final Act/Attend/Track decision also requires a Mission & Well-being input not published here, so no overall decision is asserted.
Currency of the record
CISA added this to its KEV catalog 14 days after the CVE record was published.KEV lag = CISA-KEV dateAdded − CVE.org datePublished; a floor on how long the known-exploited flaw sat in the public record before the federal catalog listed it. Severity/weakness here is CNA- or CISA-assigned (current at disclosure), independent of NVD's analysis backlog.
Public exploit available
Public exploit tooling is catalogued for this CVE (a functional/weaponized public exploit). Catalog entries: Metasploit module, nuclei template. We link the catalog page(s) only — no payload or code is hosted or restated here.Link, never host — the catalog page is the source; basicsecurity.net does not redistribute payloads.
02
Who’s exploiting it?
— attribution turns risk into urgencyAttribution not established
No confirmed (advisory-backed) threat-actor attribution is established for this record. Absence of a named actor is not absence of compromise — see Coverage & confidence.
03
Why it matters
— the attack path, told twice: adversary, then board1
Front door — unauthenticated access narrative 1
Attacker
I craft a malicious request containing specially formatted property names that are evaluated as XPath expressions by the vulnerable GeoServer instance.
Business
Attackers gain unauthenticated code execution on internet-facing GeoServer deployments, enabling full system compromise and data exfiltration.
2
Keys to the kingdom — privilege/identity takeover narrative 2
Attacker
I inject code through the XPath evaluation mechanism to establish persistence or pivot to internal network resources.
Business
Compromised GeoServer instances become beachheads for lateral movement within enterprise geospatial infrastructure and connected systems.
04
What to do
— defensible action- Remediate per the vendor advisory — confirm the fixed build for your version and verify exposure.1
Say it to the boardA vulnerability with this evidence profile is a defensible budget line, not a backlog ticket — fund the change against the proof above.
05
Coverage & confidence
— what we know, and what we don’tEstablished (cited)
Coverage gaps — stated, not hidden
Disclosure & credit2
Catalogued by GitHub_MCNA
Credited with finding itNo finder is named in the public CVE record or the scanned vendor advisory — attribution scoped to the sources checked.
Found an error? Propose a correction.
A correction is a cited counter-claim — it must cite a source,
gets reviewed by a second human, and is never auto-applied. See the
correction convention and our identity
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