Overview
A critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability, identified as CVE-2025-54306, has been discovered in the Thermo Fisher Torrent Suite Django application, specifically version 5.18.1. This vulnerability allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary commands on the affected system by exploiting insufficient input validation in the network configuration functionality.
Technical Details
The vulnerability lies within the way the Torrent Suite handles network configuration parameters through its administrative endpoints. The application permits administrators to modify the server’s network configuration via the Django application.
These configurations are then processed by Bash scripts, namely TSsetnoproxy and TSsetproxy. These scripts directly write user-controlled data to environment variables without proper sanitization. Critically, after updating these environment variables, the scripts execute a source /etc/environment command.
An attacker can inject malicious code into the environment variables. The source command then executes this injected code, leading to arbitrary command execution on the server. The vulnerability starts from the /admin/network endpoint, which passes form data as arguments to subprocess.Popen calls. This user-supplied input is used to update the environment variables.
In summary, the attack vector is:
- Attacker interacts with the
/admin/networkendpoint. - Malicious input is passed through
subprocess.Popen. - The
TSsetnoproxyorTSsetproxyscripts write the malicious input directly into environment variables without sanitization. - The
source /etc/environmentcommand executes the attacker-controlled code.
CVSS Analysis
Due to the nature of the vulnerability being a remote code execution, a high CVSS score is expected; however, at the time of writing, the CVSS score has not been assigned and is listed as N/A.
Severity: N/A
CVSS Score: N/A
Possible Impact
Successful exploitation of this vulnerability can lead to:
- Complete compromise of the Torrent Suite server.
- Data breaches and exfiltration of sensitive data.
- Malware installation and propagation.
- Denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.
- Privilege escalation and lateral movement within the network.
Mitigation and Patch Steps
The primary mitigation strategy is to upgrade to a patched version of Thermo Fisher Torrent Suite. Contact Thermo Fisher Scientific support for the latest security updates and patches.
In the interim, consider the following steps:
- Restrict access to the
/admin/networkendpoint to only authorized personnel. - Monitor network traffic and system logs for suspicious activity.
- Implement strong input validation and sanitization mechanisms on all user-supplied data, especially within the network configuration functionality. (If possible on the current version)
