Security Resilience

CVE-2024-12728

Sophos Firewall Firmware ≤ 20.0.3

Published
19 December 2024
Modified
12 November 2025
Patch / advisory
CVSS Score v3.1 9.8
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
EPSS Score 0.0094 60th percentile
Risk Priority 73 floored blend · peak EPSS

CVSS and EPSS are reproduced from their sources (NVD, FIRST EPSS). Risk Priority is our own derived reading, not an NVD score.

Summary

CVE-2024-12728 is a critical-severity Use of Weak Credentials (CWE-1391) vulnerability in Sophos Firewall Firmware. Its CVSS base score is 9.8 (Critical).

Operationally, ranked in the top 40% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to IA-5 (Authenticator Management) — see the control section below for these in your framework.

OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

A weak credentials vulnerability potentially allows privileged system access via SSH to Sophos Firewall older than version 20.0 MR3 (20.0.3).

CWE(s)

Related Threats

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2025-7624Same product: Sophos Firewall
CVE-2025-6704Same product: Sophos Firewall
CVE-2024-13973Same product: Sophos Firewall
CVE-2025-7382Same product: Sophos Firewall
CVE-2024-13974Same product: Sophos Firewall
CVE-2024-12727Same product: Sophos Firewall
CVE-2024-12729Same product: Sophos Firewall
CVE-2022-3236Same product: Sophos Firewall
CVE-2023-5552Same product: Sophos Firewall
CVE-2023-33336Same vendor: Sophos

Affected Assets

sophos
firewall firmware
≤ 20.0.3

Mitigating Controls

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI

IA-5 directly requires management of authenticator strength, distribution, and replacement, stopping default or guessable credentials from being introduced or used.

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.

blocks

A.5.17 mandates generation of non-guessable unique credentials, immediate change of defaults/temporary secrets, strong password enforcement, no reuse, blocking of compromised passwords, and secure transmission/storage; this stops exploitation of weak/guessable/default credentials for most but not all cases in CWE-1391 (e.g. leaves some non-password credential forms or post-compromise reuse outside its explicit scope).

degrades

Restricts privileged accounts but does not explicitly address default or hard-coded credentials for those accounts.

blocks

Requires security activities throughout the SDLC that can catch weak credentials, but does not mandate their elimination.

prevents

Secure-coding rules can prohibit hard-coded passwords, yet coverage depends on specific coding standards adopted.

finds

Security testing can discover weak credentials, but does not guarantee they are prevented by design.

blocks

A.8.5 mandates strong, multi-factor, non-guessable authentication techniques (with brute-force protection, no cleartext, etc.) that stop weak credentials from being successfully exploited; the bounded remainder is hard-coded/default credentials inside non-interactive product components where no human or session authentication occurs at all.

Hardening callouts derived

DISA STIG baselines are authored against specific weaknesses. Where this CVE cites a broad weakness class, the mapping is not asserted at that abstraction (owner ruling, 2026-09-25: grade only at Base and below), so no rule is shown here rather than a rule shown against the wrong grain.

  • No fine-grained STIG row for CWE-1391, a class-level weakness. Rules are authored against its narrower children: CWE-521.

References