A zero-day vulnerability in SonicWall’s Secure Mobile Access (SMA) 1000 was reportedly exploited in the wild according to researchers.
Update January 23: The Analysis and Identifying affected systems sections have been updated to include confirmation of exploitation from SonicWall and how to identify assets using Tenable Attack Surface Management.
Background
On January 22, SonicWall published a security advisory (SNWLID-2025-0002) for a newly disclosed vulnerability in its Secure Mobile Access (SMA) 1000 product, a remote access solution.
| CVE | Description | CVSSv3 |
|---|---|---|
| CVE-2025-23006 | SonicWall SMA 1000 Deserialization of Untrusted Data Vulnerability | 9.8 |
Analysis
CVE-2025-23006 is a deserialization of untrusted data vulnerability in the appliance management console (AMC) and central management console (CMC) of the SonicWall SMA 1000. An unauthenticated, remote attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a specially crafted request to a vulnerable device. Successful exploitation would grant the attacker arbitrary command execution on the device. The advisory specifies that “specific conditions” could allow for OS command execution, though it’s unclear from the information provided by SonicWall what those conditions might be.
Possible active exploitation in the wild
According to SonicWall’s Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT), there are reports of “possible active exploitation” of this flaw “by threat actors.” While specific details are not known at this time, the vulnerability was reported to SonicWall by researchers at Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC).
In a knowledge base article, SonicWall explicitly said that CVE-2025-23006 "has been confirmed as being actively exploited in the wild" and that the vulnerability should "be treated with the utmost severity."
Historical exploitation of SonicWall SMA vulnerabilities
SonicWall products have been a frequent target for attackers over the years. Specifically, the SMA product line has been targeted in the past by ransomware groups, as well as being featured in the Top Routinely Exploited Vulnerabilities list co-authored by multiple United States and International Agencies. The following are a list of known SMA vulnerabilities that have been exploited in the wild:
| CVE | Description | Tenable Blog Links | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| CVE-2019-7481 | SonicWall SMA100 SQL Injection Vulnerability | 1 | 2019 |
| CVE-2019-7483 | SonicWall SMA100 Directory Traversal Vulnerability | - | 2019 |
| CVE-2021-20016 | SonicWall SSLVPN SMA100 SQL Injection Vulnerability | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 | 2021 |
| CVE-2021-20038 | SonicWall SMA100 Stack-based Buffer Overflow Vulnerability | 1, 2, 3 | 2021 |
Proof of concept
At the time this blog was published, no proof-of-concept (PoC) code had been published for CVE-2025-23006. If and when a public PoC exploit becomes available for CVE-2025-23006, we anticipate a variety of attackers will attempt to leverage this flaw as part of their attacks.
Solution
SonicWall has released version 12.4.3-02854 to address this vulnerability, which impacts version 12.4.3-02804 and earlier. According to SonicWall, SMA 100 series and SonicWall Firewall devices are not impacted.
The advisory also provides a workaround to reduce potential impact. This involves restricting access to the AMC and CMC to trusted sources. The advisory also notes to review the best practices guide on securing SonicWall appliances.
Identifying affected systems
A list of Tenable plugins for this vulnerability can be found on the individual CVE page for CVE-2025-23006 as they’re released. This link will display all available plugins for this vulnerability, including upcoming plugins in our Plugins Pipeline.
Tenable Attack Surface Management customers are able to identify these assets using a filtered search for SMA devices:
Get more information
- SonicWall SNWLID-2025-0002 Security Advisory
- Product Notice: Urgent Security Notification - SMA 1000 (CVE-2025-23006)
Change Log
Update January 23: The Analysis and Identifying affected systems sections have been updated to include confirmation of exploitation from SonicWall and how to identify assets using Tenable Attack Surface Management.
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