Vulnerability report

Exploited in the wild Confirmed confidence In CISA KEV

CVE-2023-44221

SMA100 Command Injection

SonicWall / SMA100 · 10.2.1.9-57sv and earlier versions

Watch CVE-2023-44221 Browse KEV feed
Severity
CVSS 7.2 · High
Confidence
Confirmed
Exploit status
Exploited in the wild
EPSS
76.3%
First observed
—
Last observed
—

Decision summary

What security teams need to know first

Direct answers before the deeper technical record.

What it is

CVE-2023-44221 is a vulnerability affecting SonicWall SMA100. Improper neutralization of special elements in the SMA100 SSL-VPN management interface allows a remote authenticated attacker with administrative privilege...

Is it exploited?

Yes. Previdian tracks this CVE as a known exploited vulnerability. Confidence is confirmed. Listed in CISA KEV. Also confirmed by third-party sources.

Who is affected?

SonicWall / SMA100 10.2.1.9-57sv and earlier versions.

What should we do?

Prioritize remediation. Validate affected assets and apply vendor fixes on an accelerated timeline.

Overview

SMA100 Command Injection

Improper neutralization of special elements in the SMA100 SSL-VPN management interface allows a remote authenticated attacker with administrative privilege to inject arbitrary commands as a 'nobody' user, potentially leading to OS Command Injection Vulnerability.

SonicWall Affected
SMA100
10.2.1.9-57sv and earlier versions
View vendor advisory (opens in new tab)
Published
05 Dec 2023
Exploitation Reported
01 May 2025
Attack vector
Remote
Complexity
Low
Privileges
High
User interaction
None

Tags

edge cisa

CVE References

Exploitation evidence

Why Previdian marks this CVE as exploited

Third-party attestation and first-party sensor observation are shown separately so teams can judge the evidence chain.

Exploited in the wild

CISA

Recorded 01 May 2025

A trusted third party reported exploitation.

Known exploited vulnerability sources

Per-source evidence links for KEV attestations are available through the Previdian Pro API.

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Source Added
The Hacker News First 2025-05-01 06:22 UTC
CISA 2026-06-02 14:08 UTC

Detection

Operational artifacts and observed signals

Make the evidence actionable in scanner, SOC, and edge-control workflows.

Observed signals

Request targets
User-Agents
Callback hosts
0
0
0

Request targets and User-Agents available in Pro. Callback host details available in Enterprise.

Scanner coverage

No scanner integrations recorded yet.

Virtual patch status

No Previdian virtual patch is currently available. Future rules ship for ModSecurity, Cloudflare, and AWS WAF.

Learn about virtual patches →

No detection artifacts or sensor request patterns are available for this CVE yet.

Check back as sensor telemetry and scanner integrations are updated.

Risk and context

Severity, weaknesses, and research context

CVSS v3.1

7.2 High

Potential damage if exploited. Separate from whether attackers are using it.

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

EPSS

76.3%

Estimated chance of exploitation in the next 30 days. Previdian's warning comes from evidence, not this score.

Weaknesses

Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an OS Command ('OS Command Injection') CWE-78

Recent mention · watchTowr

SonicBoom, From Stolen Tokens to Remote Shells - SonicWall SMA (CVE-2023-44221, CVE-2024-38475)

Another day, another edge device being targeted - it’s a typical Thursday!In today’s blog post, we’re excited to share our previously private analysis of the now exploited in-the-wild N-day vulnerabilities affecting SonicWall’s SMA100 appliance. Over the last few months, our...

Read full advisory

All Mentions

Recent mention · watchTowr

SonicBoom, From Stolen Tokens to Remote Shells - SonicWall SMA (CVE-2023-44221, CVE-2024-38475)

watchTowr · 01 May 2025

Another day, another edge device being targeted - it’s a typical Thursday!In today’s blog post, we’re excited to share our previously private analysis of the now exploited in-the-wild N-day vulnerabilities affecting SonicWall’s SMA100 appliance. Over the last few months, our client

Recent mention · All CISA Advisories

CISA Adds Two Known Exploited Vulnerabilities to Catalog

All CISA Advisories · 01 May 2025

CISA has added two new vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation. CVE-2024-38475 Apache HTTP Server Improper Escaping of Output Vulnerability CVE-2023-44221 SonicWall SMA100 Appliances OS Command Injection Vulnerability These types of vulnerabilities are frequent attack vectors for malicious cyber actors and pose significant risks to the federal enterprise. Binding Operational Directive (BOD) 22-01: Reducing the Significant Risk of Known Exploited Vulnerabilities established the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog as a...

Recent mention · The Hacker News

SonicWall Confirms Active Exploitation of Flaws Affecting Multiple Appliance Models

The Hacker News · 01 May 2025

SonicWall has revealed that two now-patched security flaws impacting its SMA100 Secure Mobile Access (SMA) appliances have been exploited in the wild. The vulnerabilities in question are listed below - CVE-2023-44221 (CVSS score: 7.2) - Improper neutralization of special elements in the SMA100 SSL-VPN management interface allows a remote authenticated attacker with administrative privilege to

Timeline

From disclosure to observed exploitation

  1. 14:08 UTC

    Added to CISA KEV

    Listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog

  2. 06:22 UTC

    Added to Previdian KEV Feed

    High-confidence, third-party attested exploitation

  3. 20:10 UTC

    CVE published

    Vulnerability disclosed publicly

  4. 23:29 UTC

    CVE ID reserved

    Identifier reserved by the CNA

Pro API

Automate this intelligence

Confidence, exploit status, sensor telemetry, PoCs, scanner integrations, mentions, and tags are available programmatically for VM, SOC, and CTI workflows.

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  • Evidence confidence and provenance
  • First-party sensor telemetry
  • PoC and scanner references
  • Affected versions and enrichment
  • Automation-ready JSON delivery

GET /api/v2/pro/kevs/CVE-2023-44221

Free JSON includes basic KEV fields 
{
  "cve_id": "CVE-2023-44221",
  "confidence": "Confirmed",
  "cvss_score": 7.2,
  "cvss_estimated": false,
  "epss_score": 0.7625,
  "exploit_status": {
    "exploited_in_the_wild": true,
    "active_exploitation_observed": false
  },
  "sensor_telemetry": { "attempts": 0, "sensors": 0 }
}