Ethical Hacking News
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has issued an urgent alert to federal civilian executive branch agencies, ordering them to patch a high-severity MongoDB flaw that is actively being exploited in attacks. This vulnerability allows unauthenticated threat actors to remotely steal credentials and other sensitive data through low-complexity attacks.
US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has issued an urgent alert to patch a high-severity MongoDB flaw.The flaw, CVE-2025-14847, allows unauthenticated threat actors to steal credentials and sensitive data through low-complexity attacks.Over 74,000 Internet-exposed MongoDB instances and 87,000 IP addresses have been identified as potentially vulnerable.42% of visible systems in the cloud environment are using outdated versions of MongoDB, making them exposed to this vulnerability.CISA orders Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies to patch their systems within three weeks by January 19, 2026.Network defenders advised to disable zlib compression on servers if immediate patches cannot be applied.
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has issued an urgent alert to federal civilian executive branch agencies, ordering them to patch a high-severity MongoDB flaw that is actively being exploited in attacks. The flaw, dubbed MongoBleed and tracked as CVE-2025-14847, was patched on December 19, 2025, and it stems from how MongoDB Server processes network packets using the zlib library for data compression.
Successful exploitation of this vulnerability allows unauthenticated threat actors to remotely steal credentials and other sensitive data, including API and/or cloud keys, session tokens, internal logs, and personally identifiable information (PII), through low-complexity attacks that don't require user interaction. This makes it a highly attractive target for malicious actors looking to gain unauthorized access to sensitive systems.
Elastic security researcher Joe Desimone has also released a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit that leaks sensitive memory data when targeting unpatched hosts, further highlighting the severity of this vulnerability. On Monday, Internet security watchdog Shadowserver found over 74,000 Internet-exposed, potentially vulnerable MongoDB instances. Censys is also tracking over 87,000 IP addresses that have been fingerprinted as running possibly unpatched MongoDB versions.
According to telemetry data from the cloud security platform Wiz, which also tagged the vulnerability as exploited in the wild over the weekend, the impact across the cloud environment appears significant, with 42% of visible systems "having at least one instance of MongoDB in a version vulnerable to CVE-2025-14847." This indicates that a large number of organizations and government agencies are using outdated versions of MongoDB, leaving them exposed to this vulnerability.
CISA has now confirmed Wiz's report and has added the MongoBleed security flaw to its list of vulnerabilities exploited in attacks, ordering Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies to patch their systems within three weeks, by January 19, 2026. FCEB agencies are non-military U.S. executive branch agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of the Treasury, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Health and Human Services.
These types of vulnerabilities are frequent attack vectors for malicious cyber actors and pose significant risks to the federal enterprise," CISA warned. "Apply mitigations per vendor instructions, follow applicable BOD 22-01 guidance for cloud services, or discontinue use of the product if mitigations are unavailable." Network defenders who can't immediately apply security patches to secure their systems are advised to disable zlib compression on the server.
A MongoBleed Detector that parses MongoDB logs and identifies potential CVE-2025-14847 exploitation is also available for admins who want to identify vulnerable servers on their networks. MongoDB is an extremely popular non-relational database management system (DBMS) used by over 62,500 organizations worldwide, including dozens of Fortune 500 companies.
The recent alert from CISA highlights the importance of keeping software up-to-date and applying security patches in a timely manner. Organizations should prioritize patching their systems to prevent exploitation of this vulnerability and minimize potential damage. In addition, administrators should also review their system configurations and apply mitigations as recommended by vendor instructions or applicable guidance.
Related Information:
https://www.ethicalhackingnews.com/articles/CISA-Issues-Urgent-Alert-High-Severity-MongoDB-Flaw-Exploited-in-Attacks-ehn.shtml
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/cisa-orders-federal-agencies-to-patch-mongobleed-flaw-actively-exploited-in-attacks/
https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/11/cisa-confirms-hackers-are-actively-exploiting-critical-citrix-bleed-2-bug/
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-14847
https://www.cvedetails.com/cve/CVE-2025-14847/
Published: Tue Dec 30 08:47:33 2025 by llama3.2 3B Q4_K_M
