The Nagios Security Team recently addressed three critical vulnerabilities affecting Nagios Log Server, a popular enterprise log management and analysis platform. These vulnerabilities, discovered and reported by security researchers Seth Kraft and Alex Tisdale, posed significant risks to users of the platform.
The first vulnerability, a stored XSS vulnerability (CVE-2025-29471), allowed standard (low-privilege) users to inject malicious JavaScript payloads into their profile’s ’email’ field. This exploit could enable privilege escalation, with the potential for unauthorized admin account creation. Kraft explained that the vulnerability could also be chained to achieve remote code execution in certain configurations.
The second vulnerability, a Denial of Service (DoS) vulnerability, had the potential to allow non-admin users to shut down Elasticsearch, a code dependency of Nagios Log Server, via the API. If Elasticsearch was stopped, critical functions such as log indexing, alert generation, and historical data retrieval would fail.
The third vulnerability, an information disclosure flaw, enabled low-level users with API read-only access to perform a “get_users” API request and retrieve API keys (tokens) for all read-only and admin users in plaintext. This vulnerability could lead to user enumeration, privilege escalation, and full system compromise through the unauthorized use of exposed tokens.
To address these vulnerabilities, the Nagios Security Team released fixes for affected versions of Nagios Log Server. Users were advised to upgrade to the patched version to mitigate the risks posed by these vulnerabilities. However, it was noted that upgrading from version 2024R1 to 2024R2 was not possible due to significant changes in the front and back end of the software.
While machines running Nagios Log Server were typically not internet-facing and the vulnerabilities could only be leveraged by authenticated attackers, proof-of-concept (PoC) exploits for two of the vulnerabilities were already public. Therefore, organizations were urged to prioritize upgrading or migrating to the fixed version to protect their systems from potential exploitation.
In conclusion, addressing these critical vulnerabilities in Nagios Log Server was crucial to maintaining the security and integrity of enterprise log management and analysis processes. Organizations were advised to stay informed about cybersecurity threats and breaches by subscribing to breaking news alerts to ensure timely responses to emerging risks.