CVE-2024-13974
Sophos Firewall Firmware ≤ 21.0.1
Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:HCVSS and EPSS are reproduced from their sources (NVD, FIRST EPSS). Risk Priority is our own derived reading, not an NVD score.
Summary
CVE-2024-13974 is a high-severity Reliance on Untrusted Inputs in a Security Decision (CWE-807) vulnerability in Sophos Firewall Firmware. Its CVSS base score is 8.1 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Security Account Manager (T1003.002); ranked in the top 5% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to AC-24 (Access Control Decisions) 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-2024-13974 is a business logic vulnerability (CWE-807) in the Up2Date component of Sophos Firewall versions older than 21.0 MR1 (v20.0.1). This flaw allows attackers to manipulate the firewall's DNS environment, potentially leading to remote code execution (RCE). The vulnerability has a CVSS v3.1 base score of 8.1 (AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H), indicating high severity due to its network accessibility and significant impacts on confidentiality, integrity, and availability.
Remote attackers without privileges can exploit this vulnerability over the network, though it requires high attack complexity and no user interaction. Successful exploitation enables control over the firewall's DNS settings, culminating in arbitrary code execution on the affected device, which could compromise the entire firewall and connected networks.
The Sophos security advisory (https://www.sophos.com/en-us/security-advisories/sophos-sa-20250721-sfos-rce) recommends updating to Sophos Firewall version 21.0 MR1 (v20.0.1) or later to mitigate the issue, as this release addresses the business logic flaw in the Up2Date component.
OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2024-54805
Vulnerability Data
A business logic vulnerability in the Up2Date component of Sophos Firewall older than version 21.0 MR1 (20.0.1) can lead to attackers controlling the firewall’s DNS environment to achieve remote code execution.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Control response
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- 1 hardening rule · 1 OS baseline
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Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Explicitly requires that every access decision be based on authoritative, protected decision data rather than caller-supplied inputs.
Input validation can reject malformed or attacker-controlled values before they reach a security decision point.
Access enforcement requires decisions to be made from trusted policy data rather than modifiable client-supplied inputs.
Information-flow enforcement applies rules to validated, internal attributes instead of untrusted external values.
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.
Proper management of identities/credentials reduces the chance that security decisions will be driven by untrusted inputs.
Strong authentication mechanisms directly prevent security decisions from depending on modifiable, untrusted inputs.
Verification and protection of identity assertions stops reliance on attacker-controlled values for authorization decisions.
Policy-driven, least-privilege authorization reduces opportunities to bypass controls via tampered inputs.
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.
Monitoring can detect exploitation but does not stop the underlying weakness.
Application security requirements explicitly call for validation of inputs used in security decisions.
A.8.27 mandates security-by-design principles including 'distrust input from external applications', 'least privilege', 'default deny', 'fail securely', zero-trust 'never trust and always verify', end-to-end request encryption, and contextual validation of every request; these directly stop untrusted inputs from influencing security decisions even if the weakness is coded, leaving only a bounded remainder (e.g. non-request decisions or misimplemented principles).
Secure coding standards directly prohibit using untrusted inputs for security-critical decisions.
Security testing in development catches input-validation flaws before deployment.
A.8.3's core (access restriction per policies, identity/group controls, isolation, dynamic techniques with auth/encryption/time-bound rules) directly stops untrusted inputs from influencing security decisions for most instances of CWE-807; the bounded remainder is cases where the decision uses an input outside any access control point (e.g. purely client-side or pre-enforcement computation).