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": "7.5",
  "pubDate": "2026-09-09T14:17:18.170Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-09-09T14:17:18.170Z",
  "executiveSummary": "Dell Secure Connect Gateway (SCG) 5.0 Appliance and Application editions contain a critical vulnerability involving the use of hard-coded credentials.\nThis flaw allows an unauthenticated, remote attacker to bypass standard authentication mechanisms by leveraging embedded credentials to access the system.\nThe primary impact of this vulnerability is unauthorized information exposure, which may lead to the compromise of sensitive configuration data or system telemetry.\nThe vulnerability affects 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.\nGiven that the exploit requires only remote network access and no prior authentication, the risk is significant for organizations relying on these appliances for secure connectivity and support automation.\nSuccessful exploitation facilitates unauthorized data retrieval, potentially compromising the integrity and confidentiality of the appliance's management environment.",
  "technicalDetails": "The vulnerability is rooted in the presence of static, hard-coded credentials embedded within the codebase of Dell SCG 5.0 Appliance and Application software.\nHard-coded credentials represent a fundamental security failure, as these strings are often obfuscated or stored in cleartext within binary files, configuration scripts, or application libraries. By incorporating authentication tokens directly into the software, the product creates a static backdoor that does not require dynamic credential validation against an identity store.\nThe exploitation process involves an unauthenticated actor initiating a network connection to the target Dell SCG instance. Because the credentials are hard-coded, an attacker does not need to perform brute-force attacks, dictionary-based credential stuffing, or session hijacking. Instead, the attacker transmits the known, statically assigned credentials as part of the authentication handshake or via a specific API endpoint intended for administrative or service-level access.\nUpon successful submission of the hard-coded credentials, the application logic incorrectly validates the input against the embedded secret rather than a secure, salted hash stored in a protected database. This results in the elevation of the attacker's context to a privileged state, despite lacking valid, user-provisioned credentials.\nOnce authenticated, the attacker gains the ability to interact with internal management functions. This leads to information exposure, where the attacker may query system logs, retrieve diagnostic data, view configuration parameters, or access metadata associated with managed assets. The impact is persistent as long as the hard-coded credentials remain active within the application's configuration.\nThis vulnerability is particularly severe because it bypasses the entire authentication subsystem of the SCG platform. From an architectural perspective, the vulnerable component is likely a service or management interface exposed to the network that assumes internal communication is inherently trusted or fails to implement dynamic authentication protocols. The post-exploitation behavior is characterized by unauthorized read access to sensitive system information, which facilitates further reconnaissance and could potentially serve as a precursor to more severe compromise if additional vulnerabilities exist within the exposed management surface."
}