Overview
The cybersecurity community is currently grappling with a critical vulnerability, CVE-2025-54955, that affects OpenNebula Community Edition (CE) versions prior to 7.0.0 and Enterprise Edition (EE) versions before 6.10.3. This vulnerability stems from an exploitable FireEdge race condition that can lead to full account takeover, posing a significant risk to OpenNebula users. Given the severity and potential impact of this vulnerability, it is crucial for users and administrators to understand its workings, the risks it poses, and the measures required to mitigate it.
Vulnerability Summary
CVE ID: CVE-2025-54955
Severity: Critical with CVSS score of 8.1
Attack Vector: Network
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: None
Impact: Full system compromise or data leakage
Affected Products
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Product | Affected Versions
OpenNebula Community Edition (CE) | Before 7.0.0
OpenNebula Enterprise Edition (EE) | Before 6.10.3
How the Exploit Works
The vulnerability arises due to a race condition in FireEdge, a component of OpenNebula. An attacker can exploit this race condition to generate a valid JSON Web Token (JWT) for any user without needing their credentials. By gaining a valid JWT, the attacker can impersonate a legitimate user and take control of their account, leading to a full system compromise or significant data leakage.
Conceptual Example Code
Here’s a conceptual example of how an attacker might exploit this vulnerability. The example uses a simple HTTP request to exploit the race condition.
POST /fireedge/generateJWT HTTP/1.1
Host: target.opennebula.com
Content-Type: application/json
{ "user_id": "target_user_id" }In this example, an attacker sends a POST request to the `/fireedge/generateJWT` endpoint with a target user’s ID. If the race condition is successfully exploited, the server responds with a valid JWT for the user, which the attacker can then use to take over the user’s account.
Mitigation Guidance
Users are strongly advised to apply the vendor patch as soon as possible to fix this critical vulnerability. For those unable to apply the patch immediately, deploying a web application firewall (WAF) or intrusion detection system (IDS) can provide a temporary mitigation against potential attacks. However, these measures are only temporary and do not fully resolve the vulnerability, so applying the vendor patch should be the top priority.