Authentication Bypass RCE in Pulse Connect Secure
CVE-2021-22893 affects Pulse Connect Secure (PCS) 9.0R3/9.1R1 and later. The vulnerability is exposed through the Windows File Share Browser and Pulse Secure Collaboration features and allows an unauthenticated attacker to bypass authentication on the PCS gateway and achieve remote arbitrary code execution. Multiple sources in the provided content describe the issue as an authentication bypass leading to remote arbitrary file execution / remote arbitrary code execution on the Pulse Connect Secure gateway. The flaw was actively exploited in the wild, including in campaigns against government, defense, financial, and other organizations. Reporting in the provided content also ties exploitation to deployment of webshells and follow-on malware on compromised PCS appliances.
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Impact, mitigation & remediation
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Impact
What an attacker gets, and what they’ve been doing with it.
Mitigation
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Remediation
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Exploits
No valid public exploits. Mallory filtered out 1 candidate as fakes, detection scripts, or README-only repos.
All candidate exploits were filtered out by Mallory's validation.
Affected products & vendors
Products and vendors Mallory has correlated with this vulnerability. Open in Mallory to drill down to specific CPE configurations and version ranges.
Vendor-confirmed product mapping. Mallory continuously reconciles this list against your asset inventory.
Recent activity
20 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.
A specific vulnerability referenced as being in CISA’s KEV catalog and previously addressed via a CISA Emergency Directive.
An Ivanti zero-day referenced as having been exploited in recent years in breaches affecting government, defense, and financial organizations.
An authentication bypass vulnerability in Ivanti Pulse Connect Secure referenced as historically targeted and also explicitly noted in prior Tenable coverage as exploited in the wild.
A Pulse Secure VPN vulnerability listed as an example of an internet-facing flaw implicated in ransomware incidents (2020–2022) and recommended for defenders to check and mitigate.
The version that knows your environment.
Query your assets running an affected version, and investigate the blast radius.
Every observed campaign linking this CVE to a named adversary.
Malware families riding this exploit, with evidence and IOCs.
YARA, Sigma, Snort, and vendor rules, auto-deployed to your SIEM.
Cross-references every affected SKU, including bundled OEM variants.
Community discussion across Reddit, Mastodon, and other social sources.