Unlike previous notable F5 exploits, not all of these can be easily hand-waved away by restricting external access to the administrative interfaces known as the control plane, says Justin Rhinehart, senior analyst at Bishop Fox. Two critical exploits disclosed this week affect the so-called data plane, which is the part responsible for handing any and all traffic going through the BIG-IP platform, he says. The only way to mitigate these exploits is by patching.
In a worst-case scenario, Rhinehart says, an attacker can use a vulnerable F5 BIG-IP appliance to break into the broader enterprise network. Remote command execution in a location with such privileged access is absolutely the stuff of nightmares, he says, Attackers can use these devices to gain a foothold on a victim s network [and] attack sensitive targets that are not usually accessible from the outside world.