SonicWall SMA 1000 Authorization Bypass CVE-2025-40602

Dec 18

BLUF

A missing authorization vulnerability in SonicWall SMA1000 series secure access gateways management console allows for privilege escalation and potential unauthenticated access.

Executive Cost Summary

This cost analysis was developed by the CyberDax team using expert judgment and assisted analytical tools to support clarity and consistency.

For organizations affected by CVE-2025-40602 exploitation or suspected abuse:

Low-end total cost: $500,000 – $750,000
(Rapid patching, no chaining, limited exposure)
Typical expected range: $1M – $1.8M
Upper-bound realistic scenarios: $2.5M – $3.5M
(Chained exploitation, regulatory scrutiny, prolonged investigation)

Key cost driver:

This vulnerability is dangerous not because it is loud, but because it silently undermines trust in administrative controls. Costs are driven less by outage and more by assurance, validation, and governance response once privilege boundaries are in doubt.

Targeted Sectors

· Not specifically named however this could impact any organization using affected products

Potential Affected Sectors

· Government (federal agencies)

· Organizations using affected SonicWall SMA1000 appliances.

Potential Affected Countries

· Global

Date of First Reported Activity

· Prior to December 17, 2025.

Date of Last Reported Activity Update

· December 17, 2025.

CVE-2025-40602

CVSS 3.1

· (6.6) AV:N/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Nessus ID

· 279000

Is this on the KEV list

· Yes

What is the patch by date?

· December 24, 2025

Patching/Mitigation Data

Patch URL

· hxxps://psirt.global.sonicwall.com/vuln-detail/SNWLID-2025-0019

Mitigation

Update Firmware

· Organizations should immediately apply the hotfix versions 12.4.3-03245 or 12.5.0-02283.

Restrict Access

· Ensure the Appliance Management Console (AMC) is not exposed to the public internet. Access should be restricted to trusted internal networks or management VPNs.

Monitor Logs

· Review AMC logs for unusual authentication attempts or unauthorized configuration changes, particularly those occurring in tandem with the specified software versions.

APT Names

· UNC6148

Associated Criminal Organization Names

· There is no data indicating that this is a criminal organization at this time.

IOCs

There are no publicly reported IOCs associated with this exploit at this time.

Tools Used in Campaign

Information not available in search results.

TTPs

· T1068 Exploitation for Privilege Escalation

o This is the primary technique for CVE-2025-40602. Attackers exploit the missing authorization in the AMC to elevate from a lower-privileged state to root privileges.

· T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution

o In observed attacks, this technique is used to achieve initial code execution on the appliance by chaining with CVE-2025-23006 (a deserialization of untrusted data flaw).

· T1190 Exploit Public-Facing Application

o Adversaries target the SMA 1000's web management interface (AMC) directly over the network to initiate the attack chain.

· T1059 Command and Scripting Interpreter

o Following successful privilege escalation, attackers typically use this technique to execute arbitrary OS commands with high privileges.

· T1548.001 Abuse Privilege Escalation Mechanism

o Setuid and Setgid: This sub-technique is often relevant for local privilege escalation on Linux-based appliances like the SMA 1000 when an attacker seeks to manipulate process permissions.

Malware Names

· No malware located in public reporting.

Suggested rules / potential hunts

Please keep in mind that these rules are indicator rules they are likely to be noisy. For best results review data through data models.

Suricata

Monitor for unauthorized external access to the AMC interface (typically on non-standard ports or specific internal paths).

alert tcp any any -> $HOME_NET [AMC_PORT] (msg:"ET EXPLOIT Possible SonicWall SMA 1000 AMC Access Attempt"; flow:established,to_server; content:"/amc/"; http_uri; sid:1000001; rev:1;)

Look for serialized Java objects or unusual POST data sent to AMC endpoints, which may indicate the CVE-2025-23006 deserialization attempt.

alert http $EXTERNAL_NET any -> $HOME_NET [AMC_PORT] (msg:"ET EXPLOIT SonicWall SMA 1000 Deserialization Attempt (CVE-2025-23006)"; flow:established,to_server; content:"POST"; http_method; content:"application/x-java-serialized-object"; http_header; sid:1000002; rev:1;)

SentinelOne

Hunt for Suspicious Child Processes

Look for shells (bash, sh) or system commands (chmod, chown) spawned by the AMC web server process.

ProcessName matches "amc_server_binary" AND (ChildProcessName in ("bash", "sh", "python", "perl", "nc"))

Hunt for Root-Level Escalation

Monitor for processes that suddenly change their effective UID to 0 (root) following AMC activity.

IndicatorType = "PrivilegeEscalation" AND ProcessName matches "amc_server_binary"

File Integrity Monitoring: Hunt for unexpected file writes in management directories (e.g., /usr/local/amc/) or modifications to /etc/passwd or /etc/shadow.

Splunk

Hunt for Anomalous AMC Requests

index=network sourcetype=sonicwall_sma url="*/amc/*" http_method="POST" | stats count by src_ip, url, user_agent | where count > threshold

Search for deserialization markers in HTTP payloads if deep packet inspection logs are available.

index=proxy_logs "rO0AB" OR "java.util." url="*/amc/*" (Note: "rO0AB" is a common base64 marker for Java serialized objects).

Search for common shell indicators in URI paths or parameters following a POST to AMC.

index=network sourcetype=sonicwall_sma (url="*id*" OR url="*whoami*" OR url="*cat%20/etc/passwd*")

Delivery Method

Exploitation via the appliance management console.

Email Samples

· Not applicable

References

The Hacker News

hxxps://thehackernews.com/2025/12/sonicwall-fixes-actively-exploited-cve.html\

CISA

· hxxps://www.cisa.gov/news-events/alerts/2025/12/17/cisa-adds-three-known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog

Tenable

· hxxps://www.tenable.com/cve/CVE-2025-40602

Global SonicWall