A crucial safety vulnerability has been disclosed within the Erlang/Open Telecom Platform (OTP) SSH implementation that would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code sans any authentication beneath sure circumstances.
The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-32433, has been given the utmost CVSS rating of 10.0.
“The vulnerability permits an attacker with community entry to an Erlang/OTP SSH server to execute arbitrary code with out prior authentication,” Ruhr College Bochum researchers Fabian Bäumer, Marcus Brinkmann, Marcel Maehren, and Jörg Schwenk mentioned.
The difficulty stems from improper dealing with of SSH protocol messages that primarily allow an attacker to ship connection protocol messages previous to authentication. Profitable exploitation of the shortcomings might lead to arbitrary code execution within the context of the SSH daemon.
Additional exacerbating the danger, if the daemon course of is operating as root, it allows the attacker to have full management of the system, in flip, paving the way in which for unauthorized entry to and manipulation of delicate knowledge or denial-of-service (DoS).
All customers operating an SSH server primarily based on the Erlang/OTP SSH library are seemingly affected by CVE-2025-32433. It is advisable to replace to variations OTP-27.3.3, OTP-26.2.5.11, and OTP-25.3.2.20. As non permanent workarounds, entry to susceptible SSH servers might be prevented utilizing applicable firewall guidelines.
In an announcement shared with The Hacker Information, Mayuresh Dani, supervisor of safety analysis at Qualys, described the vulnerability as extraordinarily crucial and that it may possibly enable a risk actor to carry out actions comparable to putting in ransomware or siphoning off delicate knowledge.
“Erlang is often discovered put in on high-availability programs as a consequence of its sturdy and concurrent processing help,” Dani mentioned. “A majority of Cisco and Ericsson gadgets run Erlang.”
“Any service utilizing Erlang/OTP’s SSH library for distant entry comparable to these utilized in OT/IoT gadgets, edge computing gadgets are inclined to exploitation. Upgrading to the fastened Erlang/OTP or vendor-supported variations will remediate the vulnerability. Ought to organizations want extra time to put in upgrades, they need to limit SSH port entry to approved customers alone.”
