CVE-2018-1148
Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.
NVD · uneditedIn Nessus before 7.1.0, Session Fixation exists due to insufficient session management within the application. An authenticated attacker could maintain system access due to session fixation after a user password change.
Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.
dbcve analysis · moderate confidenceSession fixation vulnerability in Nessus before 7.1.0 allows an authenticated attacker to maintain system access after a user password change. The application fails to regenerate or invalidate session identifiers when passwords are changed, enabling session hijacking through pre-established or known session IDs.
Verify against the referenced sources before acting — the references below are authoritative for this CVE, this summary is not.
Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.
NVD · CPE data< 7.1.0CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.
From the vector- Attack vector
- Network
- Complexity
- Low
- Privileges
- Low
- User interaction
- None
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- None
- Integrity
- High
- Availability
- None
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
Am I affected? How to checkSteps we derive from the advisory and the affected-version data, so you can decide whether this CVE reaches your setup. They are a guide, not a scan — your own configuration is the authority.
dbcve checksWork through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.
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Verify Nessus is installedCheck for the presence of Nessus binaries or service. On Linux: ls /opt/nessus or systemctl list-unit-files | grep nessus. On Windows: check Program Files for Tenable folder or services.msc for Nessus service.Affected if Nessus is not found on the system, then this CVE does not apply.
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Determine installed Nessus versionRun 'nessusd -v' or 'nessuscli -v' from the Nessus bin directory. Alternatively, log into the Nessus web interface and check the About page. On Windows, right-click nessusd.exe and view Properties > Details for version.Affected if Unable to determine the version, proceed with caution assuming it could be affected.
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Compare version to affected rangeCompare the discovered version number against the vulnerable range: versions prior to 7.1.0 are affected. Check if the version string shows 7.1.0 or higher.Affected if Version is less than 7.1.0, indicating the application is vulnerable to session fixation.
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Check session management behaviorReview Nessus configuration files in the nessus/var/nessus directory for session token settings. Verify if nessusd.config or similar contains session regeneration settings upon password change events.Affected if No session regeneration or invalidation mechanism is configured for password change events, confirming the vulnerability is present.
The environment is affected if Tenable Nessus is installed with a version lower than 7.1.0 and session identifiers are not regenerated upon password changes.
Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.
Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.
From vendor data7.1.0
Implement proper session management by regenerating session identifiers upon password change and invalidating all prior sessions associated with the user account.
- Consultation3.0 h
- Implementation8.0 h
- Testing4.0 h
- Review / QA3.0 h
An estimate, not a bill — we confirm scope with you before any work starts. Need it this week? Rush from $5,088.
Scan for this in your stack
Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2018-1148 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.
References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.
Primary sourcesPractitioner notes
ContributedPeer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2018-1148 in production — separate from our analysis above.
The advisory tells you what broke. It rarely tells you what actually worked. If you’ve dealt with this one, that detail is what the next engineer is searching for.
- The version that genuinely resolved it — not the one the vendor claimed
- A config change or rule that shut the vector down
- A gotcha in the upgrade path that cost you an afternoon
No notes yet
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A place for practitioners to share what actually worked: a mitigation you’ve tested, a configuration change, a version- or environment-specific caveat, or a link to a verified patch. The most useful notes rise to the top as peers upvote them, so the signal stays high.
- Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
- Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
- No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
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