Executive brief
Wazuh is an open-source security monitoring and incident response platform used by organizations to protect their infrastructure. A path traversal vulnerability in Wazuh's cluster communication allows an attacker with a valid cluster key to delete arbitrary files and directories from the Wazuh installation by crafting a malicious node name. An attacker can trigger this by sending a single malformed message and disconnecting, causing automatic cleanup routines to destroy configuration files, rules, or other critical data without operator warning.
Technical details
The vulnerability is a path traversal flaw in Wazuh's cluster peer communication. The AbstractServerHandler.hello() method in framework/wazuh/core/cluster/server.py accepts a node name from a cluster peer without validation—no regex, length limit, or character set restriction. When a peer disconnects, the cluster.clean_up() function uses this peer-supplied node name in a path.join() call that does not canonicalize or constrain paths; an attacker can inject traversal sequences like "../../etc/rules" to escape the intended queue/cluster/ directory. The cleanup routine then recursively deletes the contents of the traversal-resolved directory (except c-internal.sock). Attack preconditions: network access to the cluster port (default TCP/1516) and knowledge of the cluster Fernet key (which is static and shareable). No prior worker registration is required. The patch (4.14.6) validates the node name format to prevent traversal sequences.
Affected products
- Wazuh Wazuh Manager 4.0.0 through 4.14.5
Timeline
- 2026-08-18: disclosed
- 2026-05-27: patched: Fix merged in pull request #36460, released in version 4.14.6