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 a Least Privilege Violation vulnerability. A high privileged attacker with local access could potentially exploit this vulnerability, leading to unauthorized access.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "3.4",
  "pubDate": "2026-09-09T16:17:08.403Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-09-09T16:17:08.403Z",
  "executiveSummary": "Dell Secure Connect Gateway (SCG) 5.0 is susceptible to a Least Privilege Violation vulnerability, characterized by an inadequate enforcement of access control policies.\nThe vulnerability resides within both the SCG 5.0 Appliance and SCG 5.0 Application, affecting versions prior to 5.36.00.16 and 5.36.00.00, respectively.\nExploitation requires a high-privileged attacker who has already secured local access to the target environment. Successful exploitation allows the threat actor to bypass intended security boundaries, leading to unauthorized access to sensitive system resources or administrative functions that should be restricted.\nThis vulnerability poses a significant risk to the confidentiality and integrity of the appliance, as it indicates a failure in the principle of least privilege, potentially allowing for privilege escalation or unauthorized lateral movement within the system's management layer.\nOrganizations relying on Dell SCG for secure connectivity are advised to prioritize updating to the specified patched versions to remediate the access control deficiency.",
  "technicalDetails": "The vulnerability is identified as a Least Privilege Violation, which arises when an application or service fails to properly restrict the actions of a user or process to the minimum set of permissions necessary for its legitimate operational tasks.\nIn the context of Dell SCG 5.0, the security architecture fails to enforce granular access controls on administrative or system-level functions. The root cause is likely an overly permissive configuration within the underlying operating system or application runtime environment, where local high-privileged users are granted execution contexts beyond their assigned scope.\nThe attack flow requires the adversary to first establish local access to the SCG 5.0 instance. Once local presence is achieved, the attacker leverages existing high-privileged credentials or established session tokens to interact with protected system components. Because the security model does not strictly enforce the principle of least privilege, the application fails to validate whether the specific operation requested by the actor is permitted by their current authorization level.\nExploitation occurs when the attacker triggers these exposed, over-privileged functions. This might involve interacting with undocumented administrative APIs, binary interfaces, or configuration files that are improperly protected by the system's access control lists (ACLs) or Discretionary Access Control (DAC) mechanisms.\nThe scope of impact is significant because it subverts the intended security posture of the appliance. An attacker capable of executing arbitrary commands or accessing files restricted to higher-level service accounts can effectively bypass audit trails, modify system configurations, or exfiltrate sensitive connectivity credentials managed by the gateway.\nBecause the appliance manages secure connections, unauthorized access could theoretically be leveraged to manipulate outgoing traffic, intercept metadata, or compromise the integrity of the connection tunnels themselves. The vulnerability is fundamentally a logic flaw in how internal privileges are segregated, meaning the defense-in-depth mechanism is compromised once the primary barrier of local authentication is breached.\nAll instances of Dell SCG 5.0 Appliance prior to version 5.36.00.16 and Dell SCG 5.0 Application prior to 5.36.00.00 are affected. Remediation requires moving to these newer versions, which presumably introduce more rigorous privilege checking, improved process isolation, and restrictive authorization checks for system-level operations."
}