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Papercut NgApplication · Papercut

CVE-2023-4568

MEDIUM · 6.5 CVSS v3.1 Published 2023-09-13
Fix available
A fix is available. Upgrade to after 22.0.12 or later.
See remediation →
74/100
Remediation priority · Elevated
Public exploit Remotely reachable No privileges Zero-click

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 · unedited
PaperCut NG allows for unauthenticated XMLRPC commands to be run by default. Versions 22.0.12 and below are confirmed to be affected, but later versions may also be affected due to lack of a vendor supplied patch.

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
How this class of weakness works · CWE-287

The mechanism that verifies who a user is can be side-stepped or fooled, letting an attacker act as someone they're not. Everything built on top of that identity then becomes untrustworthy. Fixing it means hardening the full authentication flow, including edge cases, tokens, and secondary paths.

General guidance for the improper authentication class — the official description and references above are authoritative for this specific CVE. Want a bespoke review and a reviewed fix? Ask our team →

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
Papercut NgApplication
Affected:<= 22.0.12

CVSS 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
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
Low
Integrity
Low
Availability
None

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

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.

dbcve · scoped
Upgrade available Upgrade to a release after 22.0.12
Recommended fix Moderate confidence
  1. 1. Identify the PaperCut NG server and locate the server.xml configuration file (typically in the 'server' subdirectory of the PaperCut installation)
  2. 2. Locate the <xml-rpc> or <xmlrpc> configuration section within server.xml
  3. 3. Add or modify the 'enabled' attribute to set it to 'false' (e.g., <xml-rpc enabled="false">) to disable XMLRPC functionality
  4. 4. Save the server.xml file
  5. 5. Restart the PaperCut NG service to apply the configuration changes
  6. 6. Verify that XMLRPC functionality is disabled by attempting an unauthenticated XMLRPC request (this should now fail)
  7. 7. If XMLRPC is required for legitimate integrations, consider implementing network-level access controls to restrict XMLRPC port access to only authorized IP addresses
Caveat Disabling XMLRPC may break legitimate integrations or third-party tools that rely on XMLRPC communication with PaperCut NG

Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.

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References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2023-4568 in production — separate from our analysis above.

No notes yet

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What this is

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.

What belongs here
  • 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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