Ivanti Connect Secure and Policy Secure Authentication Bypass Vulnerability
What it is
Ivanti Connect Secure (ICS, formerly known as Pulse Connect Secure) and Ivanti Policy Secure gateways contain an authentication bypass vulnerability in the web component that allows an attacker to access restricted resources by bypassing control checks. This vulnerability can be leveraged in conjunction with CVE-2024-21887, a command injection vulnerability.
Known to be used in ransomware campaigns.Active threat actors have chained this vulnerability into ransomware operations — treat patching as a same-week priority, not a "next maintenance window" task. The coping action is the same one below; the urgency is higher.
Who's affected
Affects anyone using Ivanti VPN (Connect Secure or Pulse) or Ivanti endpoint management. The VPN is what remote workers use to reach internal systems; the endpoint management tool typically has admin reach into every laptop — exploitation in either is high-impact.
What to do
Apply mitigations per vendor instructions or discontinue use of the product if mitigations are unavailable.
CISA action deadline: January 22, 2024. Federal agencies must complete the required action by this date. For private SMBs the deadline is advisory — but treat it as a strong recommendation, especially if you handle regulated data (HIPAA, GLBA, ABA model rules).
If you don't have someone in-house to verify the patch deployed across every endpoint — or you're not sure whether you're affected — that's exactly the kind of triage we do. Book a free 20-minute triage call.
Severity
CVSS base score: 8.2 — HIGH
Weakness classification: CWE-287
Source
Pulled daily from the public cisagov/kev-data mirror (CC0). View the original entry on cisa.gov. CISA KEV is US-Government public-domain data; we add the SMB-vertical framing and the coping action above.