FORTINET Security Advisory
Published Date: Not specified
Advisory Summary
🔔 ▲ Security Alert: Stack Buffer Overflow in FortiOS WAD (Explicit Proxy)
🧩 What’s happening
A stack-based buffer overflow (CWE-121) has been reported in FortiOS explicit proxy, affecting the WAD daemon. Under specific conditions, an attacker may be able to achieve remote code/command execution in the context of the WAD process by sending crafted sockets.
- Kerberos authentication enabled
- SOCKS enabled
- Potential unauthenticated exploitation (given the stated prerequisites)
- Arbitrary code execution risk on devices running affected FortiOS builds
- Increased exposure for environments where explicit proxy + SOCKS + Kerberos are deployed for users, interconnectivity, or segmented traffic flows
- Explicit proxy usage
- Kerberos authentication
- SOCKS enabled
- Disable SOCKS on explicit proxy where not required
- Review whether Kerberos auth must be enabled for that traffic path
- Restrict management/network access paths to minimize crafted-socket reachability
⚠️ Security hardening note
Because successful exploitation depends on bypassing stack protection/ASLR, your device posture and platform mitigations matter—but you should still treat this as a patch-now class risk for the affected configuration states.
📌
-121
Reference: Vendor Advisory