Firewall FirmwareOperating system · Sophos

CVE-2024-12728

CRITICAL · 9.8 CVSS v3.1 Published 2024-12-19
Fix available
A fix is available. Upgrade to 20.0.3 or later.
See remediation →
100/100
Remediation priority · Urgent
Remotely reachable No privileges Zero-click Patch available

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
A weak credentials vulnerability potentially allows privileged system access via SSH to Sophos Firewall older than version 20.0 MR3 (20.0.3).

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

A detailed technical summary for this CVE is being prepared.

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
Firewall FirmwareOperating system
Affected:< 20.0.3

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
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High

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

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 20.0.3 or later
Fixed in 20.0.3
Vendor patch www.sophos.com →
Recommended fix High confidence

20.0.3 (20.0 MR3)

  1. Log into the Sophos Firewall admin interface using an account with administrator privileges
  2. Navigate to Backup & Firmware or System > Firmware in the management console
  3. Download the Firewall Firmware version 20.0.3 from the Sophos support portal
  4. Upload the firmware file to the Sophos Firewall device
  5. Initiate the firmware upgrade process and wait for completion
  6. After upgrade, reboot the firewall device to ensure the new firmware loads properly
  7. Verify the firmware version shows 20.0.3 after the reboot
Caveat Review Sophos release notes for any configuration or feature changes before upgrading production systems

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

We can perform the upgrade in your staging environment and verify nothing breaks — typical engagement from $2,300. Get the upgrade done

Scan for this in your stack

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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-2024-12728 in production — separate from our analysis above.

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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
  • No spam, self-promotion, credentials, or personal data