CVE-2021-47752

7.5

Sylkat · AWebServer GhostBuilding

AWebServer GhostBuilding 18 is susceptible to a denial of service attack where remote, unauthenticated attackers can crash the service by flooding it with concurrent HTTP requests.

Executive summary

AWebServer GhostBuilding 18 contains a resource exhaustion vulnerability that allows unauthenticated remote attackers to crash the application, leading to a complete denial of service.

Vulnerability

This is a resource exhaustion vulnerability (CWE-770) triggered by an unauthenticated attacker sending high volumes of concurrent HTTP requests to specific endpoints, such as /mysqladmin, which causes the service to become unresponsive.

Business impact

Successful exploitation results in a complete denial of service, rendering the web server unavailable to legitimate users. Given the CVSS score of 7.5, this high severity flaw poses a significant risk to operational continuity, potentially causing critical downtime for services relying on the AWebServer platform.

Remediation

Immediate Action: As no official patch is currently available, administrators should restrict network access to the AWebServer interface to trusted IP addresses only.

Proactive Monitoring: Monitor server resource utilization and access logs for unusually high volumes of concurrent requests or repeated attempts to access administrative endpoints like /mysqladmin.

Compensating Controls: Deploy a Web Application Firewall (WAF) or rate-limiting middleware to detect and drop high-frequency request patterns originating from unauthorized sources.

Exploitation status

Public Exploit Available: Yes, a functional Python-based proof-of-concept exploit is available on ExploitDB.

Analyst recommendation

The presence of a functional proof-of-concept exploit significantly increases the risk of this vulnerability being targeted. Organizations currently utilizing AWebServer GhostBuilding 18 must prioritize the implementation of network-level access controls and rate limiting immediately to prevent service disruption, as a vendor patch is not confirmed to be available.

Sources

Originally found and disclosed by Andres Ramos (Invertebrado), per the CVE Program record.