Exploited. On CISA's list since 2021-12-10.
Embedthis GoAhead Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
CVE-2017-17562 · Embedthis GoAhead · Published 2017-12-12
How bad would it be?
8.1 out of 10
CVSS rates it high.
How likely is it to be used?
97%
Estimated chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, among the top 1% of all scored flaws (EPSS, 2026-10-29).
Is it already being used?
Yes
CISA has seen it exploited in real attacks. For US government agencies the fix is deadline passed 1603 days ago (2022-06-10).
What CISA says to do
Apply updates per vendor instructions.
Embedthis GoAhead before 3.6.5 allows remote code execution if CGI is enabled and a CGI program is dynamically linked.
What the flaw is
Embedthis GoAhead before 3.6.5 allows remote code execution if CGI is enabled and a CGI program is dynamically linked. This is a result of initializing the environment of forked CGI scripts using untrusted HTTP request parameters in the cgiHandler function in cgi.c. When combined with the glibc dynamic linker, this behaviour can be abused for remote code execution using special parameter names such as LD_PRELOAD. An attacker can POST their shared object payload in the body of the request, and reference it using /proc/self/fd/0.
From the NVD.
Fixes and advisories
Learn this
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Understand the kind of weakness behind this flaw. These resources teach the weakness, rather than reproduce this specific CVE. Follow the vendor's advice above to fix the affected product.
CWE-20 · CISA KEV. We have not selected a close learning match for this label.
CWE is a catalogue of weakness types. Labels come from the sources shown and can differ or change. Resource matches reviewed 16 October 2026.
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Exploited flaws from CISA's KEV catalogue. Chance of exploitation from EPSS by FIRST. Descriptions and scores from the NVD. This product uses the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD.