Detect CVE-2025-40602 - SonicWall SMA1000 Missing Authorization Exploitation in Elastic Security
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.
MITRE ATT&CK
Elastic Detection Query
sequence by source.ip with maxspan=10m
[network where network.protocol == "http" and destination.port in (443, 8443, 80, 8080)
and url.path : ("/appliance/*", "/management*", "/admin*", "/api/*", "/vpn*", "/config*")
and http.response.status_code in (401, 403)]
[network where network.protocol == "http" and destination.port in (443, 8443, 80, 8080)
and url.path : ("/appliance/*", "/management*", "/admin*", "/api/*", "/vpn*", "/config*")
and http.response.status_code in (200, 201, 204)]EQL sequence detection for CVE-2025-40602 that identifies the pattern of initial authorization failure followed by successful access to the same SMA1000 administrative paths, indicating a potential authorization bypass.
Data Sources
Required Tables
False Positives & Tuning
- Legitimate users who encounter session timeouts and successfully re-authenticate to the SMA1000 portal
- API clients with token refresh flows that briefly receive 401 before obtaining a new valid token
- Load testing tools cycling through authentication states during authorized performance testing
Other platforms for CVE-2025-40602
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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