Raw vector
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:XCVSS and EPSS are reproduced from their sources (NVD, FIRST EPSS). Risk Priority is our own derived reading, not an NVD score.
Summary
CVE-2023-53963 is a critical-severity OS Command Injection (CWE-78) vulnerability in Sound4 Impact Firmware. Its CVSS base score is 9.3 (Critical).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique NTDS (T1003.003); ranked in the top 11% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog; a public proof-of-concept is referenced.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to SA-11 (Developer Testing and Evaluation) and SI-10 (Information Input Validation) — see the control section below for these in your framework.
Deeper analysis AI-assisted summary
Synthesised by an AI model from the NVD description and linked references — a reading aid, not an authoritative source.
CVE-2023-53963 is an unauthenticated OS command injection vulnerability (CWE-78) in SOUND4 IMPACT, FIRST, PULSE, and Eco products version 2.x. The issue affects the login.php and index.php scripts, where the 'password' POST parameter fails to properly sanitize input, allowing remote attackers to inject and execute arbitrary shell commands with web server privileges. It carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 9.8 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H), indicating critical severity due to its network accessibility, low complexity, and potential for high impact on confidentiality, integrity, and availability.
Remote, unauthenticated attackers can exploit this vulnerability by sending crafted POST requests to the affected endpoints with shell metacharacters in the 'password' parameter. No user interaction or privileges are required, enabling exploitation over the network with minimal effort. Successful attacks allow arbitrary command execution on the underlying operating system, which could lead to full server compromise, data exfiltration, persistence, or further lateral movement depending on the web server's context and privileges.
Advisories from Vulncheck and ZeroScience (ZSL-2022-5738) describe the vulnerability and exploitation details, while a proof-of-concept exploit is publicly available on Exploit-DB (exploit 51173). The archived SOUND4 website provides product context, but no specific patches or vendor mitigations are detailed in the references.
A public exploit on Exploit-DB highlights the risk of real-world abuse against internet-exposed instances of these audio processing devices.
OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2023-60248
Vulnerability Data
SOUND4 IMPACT/FIRST/PULSE/Eco v2.x contains an unauthenticated OS command injection vulnerability that allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary shell commands through the 'password' parameter. Attackers can exploit the login.php and index.php scripts by injecting shell commands via the 'password' POST parameter…
more
to execute commands with web server privileges.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Control response
—
—
—
V1.2.5V1.2.8
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Developer testing and evaluation can discover missing or incorrect command sanitization during development.
Input validation directly neutralizes or rejects special characters that would otherwise alter OS command structure.
Least privilege reduces the permissions available to any process that could be subverted by injected commands.
Least functionality restricts available OS commands and interpreters, limiting the blast radius of injection.
Secure engineering principles require proper neutralization of untrusted input before command construction.
Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
PR.PS-06's SDLC practices directly require secure coding and input handling that blocks command-injection defects, yet the single broad outcome leaves many specific neutralization vectors and verification gaps unaddressed.
Routine patching/maintenance can remediate known command-injection CVEs in dependencies (partial forward) but does nothing to stop developers from introducing improper neutralization in custom code (none reverse).
Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.