Description

Dell PowerScale OneFS, Versions 9.5.0.0 through 9.7.1.0, Versions 9.8.0.0 through 9.10.1.0, and Versions 9.11.0.0 through 9.14.0.1, contain a command injection vulnerability. An admin privileged local attacker could potentially exploit this vulnerability, leading to elevation of privileges to root, impacting confidentiality, integrity, and availability.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "6.7",
  "pubDate": "2026-09-09T17:17:32.920Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-09-09T17:17:32.920Z",
  "executiveSummary": "This vulnerability is identified as a command injection flaw affecting Dell PowerScale OneFS, which allows an attacker with administrative-level local access to execute arbitrary commands with elevated system privileges. The vulnerability resides within the OneFS operating system, specifically impacting multiple release branches from version 9.5.0.0 through 9.14.0.1. By injecting malicious command sequences, an authenticated administrator can bypass standard security controls, resulting in a full privilege escalation to the root user context. The impact of successful exploitation is severe, as it grants the attacker total control over the storage system, compromising the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of all data managed by the PowerScale cluster. The primary risk implication is the potential for unauthorized administrative manipulation, system configuration subversion, or total data compromise. Exploitation requires the attacker to possess pre-existing administrative credentials and local access to the system environment. Given the nature of the privilege escalation, it represents a critical security failure in the command processing logic of the OneFS platform.",
  "technicalDetails": "The vulnerability is characterized as an OS command injection flaw located within the administrative interfaces of Dell PowerScale OneFS. Command injection occurs when the underlying software fails to properly sanitize or validate user-supplied input before passing it to a system shell or executive function. In this specific implementation, certain administrative commands or configuration utilities process input strings that are subsequently interpreted by a system-level interpreter (e.g., /bin/sh or equivalent).\nThe attack flow requires an attacker to possess valid administrative-level access to the system. Once authenticated, the attacker provides a specially crafted input string containing shell metacharacters (such as semicolons, pipes, or backticks) within parameters expected by an administrative utility. Because the application logic fails to perform sufficient input sanitization or utilizes dangerous system execution functions without parameterization, the shell interprets the injected metacharacters as part of a legitimate system command sequence. This results in the execution of arbitrary commands with the privilege level of the parent process, which, in this context, escalates to the root user account.\nAffected software versions include 9.5.0.0 through 9.7.1.0, 9.8.0.0 through 9.10.1.0, and 9.11.0.0 through 9.14.0.1. The vulnerable components are the command-processing subsystems within the OneFS stack that facilitate local administrative tasks. The root cause is the improper handling of untrusted input passed to command execution primitives. Upon successful injection, the attacker can execute arbitrary binary files, modify system configuration files, terminate critical services, exfiltrate sensitive data stored on the cluster, or establish persistent backdoors for continued unauthorized access.\nPost-exploitation, the attacker gains root-level control, effectively bypassing all ACLs and storage-level permissions. This allows the adversary to read, modify, or delete any object stored within the file system, manipulate audit logs to obfuscate their activities, and control system networking or cluster membership. As the vulnerability requires administrative access, it highlights the importance of managing administrative boundaries, as an attacker with low-level administrative access can leverage this flaw to attain maximum system authority, rendering the distinction between local administrator and root user obsolete."
}