CVE-2025-40602

CVE-2025-40602 - SonicWall SMA1000 Missing Authorization Exploitation

Detects exploitation attempts targeting CVE-2025-40602, a missing authorization vulnerability (CWE-862) combined with execution with unnecessary privileges (CWE-250) in SonicWall SMA1000 appliances. This KEV-listed vulnerability allows unauthenticated or insufficiently privileged attackers to access restricted resources or execute privileged operations. Detection focuses on anomalous HTTP requests to SMA1000 management interfaces, unexpected authentication bypass patterns, and post-exploitation activity indicative of privilege escalation on SMA gateway infrastructure.

Vulnerability Intelligence

KEV — Known Exploited

Affected Software

Vendor
SonicWall
Product
SMA1000 appliance

Weakness (CWE)

Timeline

Disclosed
December 17, 2025

CVSS

Unscored
Write-up coming soon

What is CVE-2025-40602 CVE-2025-40602 - SonicWall SMA1000 Missing Authorization Exploitation?

CVE-2025-40602 - SonicWall SMA1000 Missing Authorization Exploitation (CVE-2025-40602) maps to the Initial Access and Privilege Escalation and Lateral Movement tactics — the adversary is trying to get into your network in MITRE ATT&CK.

This page provides production-ready detection logic for CVE-2025-40602 - SonicWall SMA1000 Missing Authorization Exploitation, covering the data sources and telemetry it touches: Microsoft Sentinel CommonSecurityLog, Defender for Endpoint DeviceNetworkEvents, Azure Firewall Logs, SonicWall Syslog via CEF. The queries below are rated critical severity at medium confidence, and ship for 7 SIEM platforms — KQL, SPL, Elastic, QRadar, Sumo, YARA-L, LogScale.

MITRE ATT&CK

Tactic
Initial Access Privilege Escalation Lateral Movement
Microsoft Sentinel / Defender
kusto
union DeviceNetworkEvents, CommonSecurityLog
| where TimeGenerated > ago(24h)
| where (DeviceVendor has "SonicWall" or DeviceProduct has "SMA1000" or DestinationPort in (443, 8443, 80, 8080))
| where (RequestURL has_any ("/appliance/", "/management", "/api/", "/admin", "/auth", "/vpn") or Message has_any ("/appliance/", "/management"))
| where (ResultCode in ("200", "201", "204") and RequestURL has_any ("/admin", "/management", "/config", "/api/v1"))
    or (ResultCode in ("401", "403") and RequestURL has_any ("/admin", "/management") and isnotempty(SourceIP))
| summarize RequestCount = count(), DistinctURLs = dcount(RequestURL), DistinctStatusCodes = dcount(ResultCode), RequestURLs = make_set(RequestURL, 20), StatusCodes = make_set(ResultCode) by SourceIP = coalesce(SourceIP, RemoteIP), DestinationIP = coalesce(DestinationIP, LocalIP), bin(TimeGenerated, 5m)
| where RequestCount >= 5 or DistinctURLs >= 3
| extend RiskScore = case(
    RequestCount >= 20 and DistinctURLs >= 5, "High",
    RequestCount >= 10, "Medium",
    "Low")
| project TimeGenerated, SourceIP, DestinationIP, RequestCount, DistinctURLs, RequestURLs, StatusCodes, RiskScore

Detects anomalous HTTP access patterns against SonicWall SMA1000 management and API endpoints consistent with CVE-2025-40602 missing authorization exploitation. Identifies both successful unauthorized access and repeated probing of restricted paths.

critical severity medium confidence

Data Sources

Microsoft Sentinel CommonSecurityLog Defender for Endpoint DeviceNetworkEvents Azure Firewall Logs SonicWall Syslog via CEF

Required Tables

CommonSecurityLog DeviceNetworkEvents

False Positives

  • Legitimate administrators performing bulk configuration changes via the management API
  • Automated monitoring or health-check systems that poll multiple SMA1000 endpoints
  • Security scanning tools performing authorized vulnerability assessments against SMA1000 appliances
  • Load balancers or reverse proxies that aggregate requests and appear as single high-volume sources

Sigma rule & cross-platform mapping

The detection logic for CVE-2025-40602 - SonicWall SMA1000 Missing Authorization Exploitation (CVE-2025-40602) above is provided in a vendor-neutral form so you can deploy it on any SIEM. The same logic is shipped here as native KQL (Microsoft Sentinel / Defender), SPL (Splunk), Elastic (Elastic Security (EQL)), QRadar (IBM QRadar (AQL)), Sumo (Sumo Logic CSE), YARA-L (Google Chronicle / SecOps), LogScale (CrowdStrike LogScale (CQL)) queries. In Sigma terms, this detection targets the following logsource:

logsource:
  category: network_connection
  product: windows

Browse the community-maintained Sigma rules for this technique:


Testing Methodology

Validate this detection against 3 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.

  1. Test 1SMA1000 Admin Endpoint Probe - Authorization Bypass Simulation

    Expected signal: Network logs showing HTTP GET requests from the test host to the SMA1000 target IP on port 443, with URL paths matching /appliance/, /management/, /admin/, and /api/. HTTP response codes of 200 on any path indicate potential missing authorization.

  2. Test 2SMA1000 Configuration Extraction via Unauthorized API Access

    Expected signal: Network logs showing HTTP GET requests to multiple /api/v1/ and /appliance/ paths with JSON Accept headers, followed by data transfer bytes indicating response body content was returned. File creation events in /tmp/sma1000_test/ on the attacking host.

  3. Test 3SMA1000 Privilege Escalation Test via Unauthenticated Admin Action

    Expected signal: Network logs showing HTTP POST request to /api/v1/users endpoint with JSON body containing user creation parameters. If vulnerable, response body will contain user object with assigned ID. Authentication logs on SMA1000 should NOT show a preceding valid authentication event from the source IP.

Unlock Pro Content

Get the full detection package for CVE-2025-40602 including response playbook, investigation guide, and atomic red team tests.

Response PlaybookInvestigation GuideHunting QueriesAtomic Red Team TestsTuning Guidance

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