Description

ColdFusion is affected by an Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an OS Command ('OS Command Injection') vulnerability that could result in arbitrary code execution in the context of the current user. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability to execute arbitrary code. Exploitation of this issue does not require user interaction. Scope is changed.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "10.0",
  "pubDate": "2026-08-11T17:17:59.627Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-08-11T17:17:59.627Z",
  "executiveSummary": "ColdFusion is affected by an OS Command Injection vulnerability, categorized as an Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an OS Command. This critical security flaw enables an unauthenticated remote attacker to execute arbitrary system commands and achieve arbitrary code execution within the security context of the current system user. The scope of the vulnerability is changed, indicating that successful exploitation can impact resources beyond the immediate vulnerable component. Exploitation of this issue does not require any user interaction, significantly lowering the attack complexity and increasing the overall risk to enterprise infrastructure. Affected systems face severe confidentiality, integrity, and availability risks, as threat actors can leverage this flaw to fully compromise the underlying host operating system. Organizations utilizing vulnerable deployments of ColdFusion must prioritize immediate defensive actions and apply official vendor patches or configuration hardening to neutralize the threat.",
  "technicalDetails": "The vulnerability resides in ColdFusion due to improper sanitization and neutralization of special elements within input vectors that are subsequently passed to the underlying operating system shell for execution. This improper input handling allows malicious actors to inject shell metacharacters and arbitrary commands into internal system calls executed by the application.\nThe root cause stems from a failure to enforce strict input validation and parameterization before executing OS-level commands. When untrusted input containing malicious command payloads is processed by the vulnerable component, the application fails to neutralize special characters, allowing the underlying shell to interpret and execute the injected payload alongside or instead of the intended command.\nExploitation of this vulnerability requires network connectivity to the ColdFusion service. The attack flow begins when an attacker crafts a malicious request containing OS command injection sequences targeted at the vulnerable input vector. The application processes the request and passes the unsanitized input to the host operating system shell. The shell parses the injected commands, leading to immediate execution of arbitrary code within the execution context of the user running the ColdFusion process.\nThe attack does not require user interaction, enabling automated exploitation via specially crafted network requests. Depending on the privileges assigned to the running ColdFusion process, successful payload execution can grant the attacker extensive access to the host system, facilitating post-exploitation activities such as privilege escalation, lateral movement, data exfiltration, or the deployment of persistent backdoors."
}