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🛡️ CVE-2023-0524 — nessus

🟠 CVSS 8.8 — High ✅ No Known Exploit CWE-269 NVD
8.8
CVSS Score
0 Low4 Medium7 High9 Critical10

Description

As part of our Security Development Lifecycle, a potential privilege escalation issue was identified internally. This could allow a malicious actor with sufficient permissions to modify environment variables and abuse an impacted plugin in order to escalate privileges. We have resolved the issue and also made several defense-in-depth fixes alongside. While the probability of successful exploitation is low, Tenable is committed to securing our customers’ environments and our products. The updates have been distributed via the Tenable plugin feed in feed serial numbers equal to or greater than #202212212055.

How this vulnerability can be exploited

This issue can be reached over the network, attack complexity is low, an attacker needs low-level privileges on the target. No user interaction is required. The scope is unchanged, so the impact stays within the vulnerable component. Rated impact: confidentiality high, integrity high, availability high.

CVSS metrics in full

The score comes from this vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

  • Attack vector: Network — reachable from anywhere that can route to the service.
  • Attack complexity: Low — the attack works reliably, with no preparation.
  • Privileges required: Low — an ordinary user account is enough.
  • User interaction: None — nobody has to be tricked into anything.
  • Scope: Unchanged — the damage stays inside the vulnerable component.
  • Confidentiality impact: High — total loss, or loss the attacker controls.
  • Integrity impact: High — total loss, or loss the attacker controls.
  • Availability impact: High — total loss, or loss the attacker controls.

Weakness class

CVE-2023-0524 is classified as CWE-269: Improper Privilege Management. Privileges are assigned, dropped or restored incorrectly, leaving an actor with more access than intended.

Affected software

CVE-2023-0524 is recorded against 3 packages.

  • nessus
  • tenable.io
  • tenable.sc

Timeline and source

Published on 1 February 2023 and last revised on 17 June 2026. No public exploit is currently recorded for this entry. Record sourced from NVD.

References

www.tenable.com
www.tenable.com

Other advisories for this package

nessus has other advisories on record. If you are patching this one, these are worth checking on the same host:

Same weakness in other software

These advisories are the same class of weakness (CWE-269: Improper Privilege Management) in other software:

Details

Severity HIGH
CVSS Score 8.8
CVSS Vector CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CWE CWE-269
Public Exploit ✅ No
Source NVD
Published 2023-02-01
Updated 2026-08-20
Modified 2026-06-17
Fix URL N/A

Affected Packages

Software From version Fixed in
nessus — —
tenable.io — —
tenable.sc — —

Similar Threats

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ⓘ Data Notice: The information presented above has been compiled from publicly available internet sources. Boteraser aggregates this data solely for informational purposes and does not independently classify, evaluate, or endorse any findings about the vulnerabilities listed. The accuracy and completeness of this information is the sole responsibility of the original publishers. Boteraser and its operators accept no liability for any decisions made based on this data.

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