Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:HSummary
CVE-2025-63261 is a high-severity OS Command Injection (CWE-78) vulnerability in Awstats Awstats. Its CVSS base score is 7.8 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Command and Scripting Interpreter (T1059); ranked in the top 39% 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-2025-63261 is a command injection vulnerability in AWStats 8.0 via the open function, classified under CWE-78 (OS Command Injection). The vulnerability carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 7.8 (AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H), highlighting its high severity for local exploitation. It was published on 2026-03-20T21:17:12.800.
A local attacker with low privileges can exploit this vulnerability with low attack complexity and no user interaction. Exploitation enables arbitrary command execution, resulting in high impacts to confidentiality, integrity, and availability on the affected system.
Advisories and related resources include the Debian LTS announcement at https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2026/03/msg00013.html, a pentest-tools report detailing code execution at https://pentest-tools.com/PTT-2025-021-Code-Execution-in-AWStats.pdf, and the AWStats source code at https://github.com/eldy/AWStats/blob/develop/wwwroot/cgi-bin/awstats.pl, which provide further details on mitigation and patches.
OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2025-208911
Vulnerability Data
AWStats 8.0 is vulnerable to Command Injection via the open function
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Control response
—
—
—
V1.2.5V1.2.8V15.2.5
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.
Security testing and code review target insecure use of operating-system command interfaces, catching command-injection flaws introduced during development.