Infoblox NIOS: Argument injection in Maintenance Mode leading to privilege escalation
Summary
Infoblox NIOS contains an argument injection flaw in the Maintenance Mode command line. An authenticated user with high privileges can inject arguments into troubleshooting commands and, through a diagnostic shell condition, obtain root access to the underlying appliance operating system. The attack requires a valid high-privilege account and is not remotely exploitable without one, but the impact on the appliance is total.
Affected
- Infoblox NIOS. The vendor advisory is reported to list all NIOS versions as affected, while the CVE record and third-party sources list 9.0.x to 9.1.0. This conflict is unresolved; check the vendor advisory for your release.
Fixed in
- Hotfixes are available for all supported affected NIOS releases. Check the Infoblox advisory for the build matching your release.
- Permanent fix: NIOS 9.2.0.
Workaround
Unknown. The workaround section of the vendor advisory could not be retrieved.
- Vendor guidance: review operational access to Maintenance Mode and apply the hotfix for your release.
- Interim measure (not a vendor statement): restrict which administrator accounts can reach the Maintenance Mode CLI.
Exploitation
- CISA SSVC: exploitation none, automatable no, technical impact total.
- Not marked as known exploited (KEV) in the sources checked.
- No public proof of concept found. This does not prove that none exists.
Our recommendation
- Apply the hotfix for your NIOS release or upgrade to NIOS 9.2.0.
- Restrict Maintenance Mode CLI access to a minimal set of administrators until patched.
- Review appliance and access logs for unusual Maintenance Mode, diagnostic shell or privileged activity.
- Verify that NIOS management interfaces are not reachable from the internet.
- Review administrator accounts for excessive privileges, shared accounts and weak credentials.
Public exploits
PoC-in-GitHub, Metasploit and Exploit-DB list nothing for this CVE.
Research sources
- Infoblox security advisory: NIOS Maintenance Mode permits root shell support.infoblox.com
- AUMLayer: Infoblox NIOS privilege escalation (reporter write-up) aumlayer.com
- Hol.org: CVE-2026-107510 exploitation status hol.org
- Strix: CVE-2026-107510 (third-party version range) www.strix.ai
- OffSeq Radar: CVE-2026-107510 (third-party version range) radar.offseq.com
Researched and written up in English and German by an AI (Claude by Anthropic) based on NVD, CISA, EPSS and the sources listed. The vendor information is authoritative. Researched on 31 Oct 2026, 07:14.
Original description (NVD)
An authenticated high privilege user can inject arguments in troubleshooting commands resulting in privilege escalation.
Sources
The tracker combines official, freely usable data sources – updated continuously:
- NVD (NIST) – CVEs, rating (CVSS), affected products
- CISA KEV – vulnerabilities confirmed by CISA as actively exploited
- CISA Vulnrichment – CISA assessment (SSVC) in the official CVE record
- FIRST EPSS – probability of exploitation
- Microsoft MSRC – Patch Tuesday: vulnerabilities, severity, updates
- PoC-in-GitHub – public proof-of-concept repositories
- Metasploit (Rapid7) – modules of the Metasploit Framework
- Exploit-DB (OffSec) – archive of public exploits (links only)
- Patch days: official vendor pages (linked per vendor) (Vendor patch days)
This product uses data from the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD. EPSS data © FIRST.org.
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