Detect CVE-2025-2746: Kentico Xperience CMS Authentication Bypass in Elastic Security
Detects exploitation of CVE-2025-2746, an authentication bypass vulnerability (CWE-288) in Kentico Xperience CMS that allows attackers to access protected resources via alternate paths or channels without valid credentials. This vulnerability is actively exploited in the wild (CISA KEV).
MITRE ATT&CK
Elastic Detection Query
sequence by source.ip with maxspan=5m
[network where event.dataset in ("iis.access", "apache.access", "nginx.access")
and url.path : ("/CMSPages/*", "/CMSModules/*", "/CMSAdminControls/*", "/CMS/*", "/Admin/*")
and http.response.status_code in (200, 201, 302)
and (not exists(user.name) or user.name in ("-", "", "anonymous"))
and not url.path : ("*login*", "*logon*", "*signin*")]
[network where event.dataset in ("iis.access", "apache.access", "nginx.access")
and url.path : ("/CMSPages/*", "/CMSModules/*", "/CMSAdminControls/*", "/CMS/*", "/Admin/*")
and http.response.status_code in (200, 201, 302)
and (not exists(user.name) or user.name in ("-", "", "anonymous"))]
[network where event.dataset in ("iis.access", "apache.access", "nginx.access")
and url.path : ("/CMSPages/*", "/CMSModules/*", "/CMSAdminControls/*", "/CMS/*", "/Admin/*")
and http.response.status_code in (200, 201, 302)
and (not exists(user.name) or user.name in ("-", "", "anonymous"))]EQL sequence detection for repeated unauthenticated access to Kentico CMS administrative endpoints. Three or more successful requests from the same IP without authentication within 5 minutes indicates active exploitation of the authentication bypass.
Data Sources
Required Tables
False Positives & Tuning
- Automated monitoring tools making repeated health checks to CMS pages
- Search engine crawlers accessing publicly reachable CMS paths that share naming conventions with admin areas
- Load balancer health probes hitting CMS endpoints without session cookies
- Legitimate users with expired sessions attempting to access bookmarked admin pages
Other platforms for CVE-2025-2746
Testing Methodology
Validate this detection against 4 adversary techniques from Atomic Red Team. Each test below lists the behaviour to exercise and the telemetry you should expect to see. Executable commands and cleanup steps are available with Pro.
- Test 1CVE-2025-2746 Authentication Bypass Path Enumeration
Expected signal: IIS access log entries showing HTTP GET requests to /CMSPages/, /CMSModules/, /CMSAdminControls/, /CMS/, and /Admin/ paths from the test host IP without a cs-username value, with HTTP response codes of 200, 302, or 401 depending on patch status.
- Test 2CVE-2025-2746 Alternate Path Channel Bypass Attempt
Expected signal: IIS logs should capture the URL-encoded and case-variant path requests. ASP.NET request normalization may cause the logged URI to differ from the requested URI — look for both raw and normalized forms in telemetry. Windows Security Event Log may show failed authorization attempts (Event ID 4625) if integrated auth is configured.
- Test 3CVE-2025-2746 Post-Exploitation CMS Account Creation Simulation
Expected signal: IIS logs showing POST request to /CMSModules/Membership/Pages/Users/User_Edit_General.aspx without authentication. Kentico CMS_EventLog table entries for user creation attempt. Windows Security Event Log entries for IIS process activity. If successful on unpatched system, CMS_User table will contain the new account.
- Test 4CVE-2025-2746 Network-Level Authentication Bypass Detection Validation
Expected signal: 10 concurrent HTTP requests to Kentico CMS paths appearing in IIS logs within a 1-second window, all from the same source IP without authentication headers. The burst pattern should appear clearly in SIEM dashboards.
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