Alert - Vulnerabilities impacting ConnectWise ScreenConnect

Audience

This Alert is intended for IT professionals and managers.

Purpose

An Alert is used to raise awareness of a recently identified cyber threat Cyber threatA threat actor, using the internet, who takes advantage of a known vulnerability in a product for the purposes of exploiting a network and the information the network carries. that may impact cyber information assets, and to provide additional detection DetectionThe monitoring and analyzing of system events in order to identify unauthorized attempts to access system resources. and mitigation advice to recipients. The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security Cyber securityThe protection of digital information, as well as the integrity of the infrastructure housing and transmitting digital information. More specifically, cyber security includes the body of technologies, processes, practices and response and mitigation measures designed to protect networks, computers, programs and data from attack, damage or unauthorized access so as to ensure confidentiality, integrity and availability. ("Cyber Centre") is also available to provide additional assistance regarding the content of this Alert to recipients as requested.

Details

On February 19, 2024, the Cyber Centre became aware of vulnerabilities impacting all versions of ConnectWise ScreenConnect prior to 23.9.8. In response, the Cyber Centre released advisory AV24-100 along with an update on February 20, 2024, highlighting that the vulnerabilities are being exploited^{Footnote 1}.

ConnectWise reports that CVE-2024-1709 is an authentication AuthenticationA process or measure used to verify a users identity. bypass vulnerability VulnerabilityA flaw or weakness in the design or implementation of an information system or its environment that could be exploited to adversely affect an organization's assets or operations. and CVE-2024-1708 is a path traversal flaw. These vulnerabilities combined could allow for remote code execution (RCE)^{Footnote 2}.

While ConnectWise has indicated that CVE-2024-1709 may be exploited in the wild, open-source researchers have reported that exploitation impacting both CVE-2024-1708 and CVE-2024-1709 have been observed and in some cases resulted in the deployment of ransomware RansomwareA type of malware that denies a user's access to a system or data until a sum of money is paid. .

Suggested actions

The Cyber Centre strongly recommends that organizations patch any ScreenConnect systems immediately. ConnectWise recommends updating impacted products to version 23.9.8^{Footnote 2}. The vendor states cloud partners are remediated against both vulnerabilities reported on February 19.

Organizations should also review and implement the Cyber Centre’s Top 10 IT Security Actions^{Footnote 3} with an emphasis on the following topics:

• Consolidating, monitoring, and defending Internet gateways.
• Patching operating systems and applications.
• Isolate web-facing applications.

Should activity matching the content of this alert be discovered, recipients are encouraged to report via the My Cyber Portal, or email contact@cyber.gc.ca.

Partner Reporting

NCSC-NZ - Unauthenticated Remote Code Execution in ConnectWise's ScreenConnect