Description

Dell SCG 5.0 Appliance versions prior to 5.36.00.16 and Dell SCG 5.0 Application versions prior to 5.36.00.00, contains an Use of Hard-coded Credentials vulnerability. An unauthenticated attacker with remote access could potentially exploit this vulnerability, leading to information exposure.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "4.4",
  "pubDate": "2026-09-09T14:17:17.767Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-09-09T14:17:17.767Z",
  "executiveSummary": "Dell Secure Connect Gateway (SCG) 5.0 Appliance and Application versions contain a vulnerability categorized as Use of Hard-coded Credentials. This flaw allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to gain unauthorized access to sensitive information by leveraging static credentials embedded within the system's codebase.\nThe vulnerability poses a significant risk to data confidentiality and operational security. By utilizing these hard-coded credentials, an adversary can bypass standard authentication mechanisms without requiring valid user account information.\nThe affected systems include Dell SCG 5.0 Appliance versions prior to 5.36.00.16 and Dell SCG 5.0 Application versions prior to 5.36.00.00. The primary impact is unauthorized information exposure, which could lead to further compromise depending on the level of access granted by the hard-coded accounts. Exploitation does not require prior authentication, making the attack surface readily accessible to any remote actor with network reach to the management interface of the SCG.",
  "technicalDetails": "The root cause of this vulnerability is the presence of static, hard-coded credentials within the Dell SCG 5.0 firmware and application binaries. Hard-coded credentials function as 'backdoor' access points that remain consistent across all deployed instances of the software, circumventing the intended security boundary of the authentication subsystem.\nIn a typical attack scenario, an unauthorized actor identifies the network-exposed management interface of a Dell SCG appliance. The attacker then attempts to authenticate to the application using the discovered hard-coded credentials. Because the credentials are hard-coded in the application logic, the authentication service validates the request against these static values rather than a dynamic or user-managed credential store. Upon successful validation, the service grants the attacker an active session or access to sensitive API endpoints.\nThe attack flow follows a straightforward pattern: first, network reconnaissance identifies an SCG 5.0 instance; second, the attacker utilizes the known hard-coded username and password pair to craft an authentication request; third, the application accepts these credentials, providing the attacker with access to the system's data and management functions. This process requires no interaction from legitimate users and can be fully automated using scripts or off-the-shelf security tools.\nThe vulnerable components are the core authentication modules or internal service interfaces of the SCG Appliance (versions < 5.36.00.16) and SCG Application (versions < 5.36.00.00). The exposure is remote in nature, meaning any network-reachable SCG instance is susceptible to exploitation if it has not been patched.\nPost-exploitation impact is severe, as information exposure can encompass sensitive system configurations, diagnostic logs, or metadata stored within the SCG environment. Furthermore, because these credentials are baked into the software, they cannot be remediated via simple password rotations; they require a comprehensive patch to remove the hard-coded strings from the source code and update the authentication logic to rely solely on secure, user-managed credential management systems.\nThe persistence of this vulnerability facilitates long-term unauthorized access until the patches are applied, effectively negating standard enterprise security policies such as multi-factor authentication or periodic credential expiration if the hard-coded route provides an alternative entry vector that bypasses these controls."
}