CVE-2022-38337 — When aborting a SFTP connection, MobaXterm before v22

When aborting a SFTP connection, MobaXterm before v22.1 sends a hardcoded password to the server. The server treats this as an invalid login attempt which can result in a Denial of Service (DoS) for the user if services like fail2ban are used.

01What is this vulnerability?

When aborting a SFTP connection, MobaXterm before v22.1 sends a hardcoded password to the server. The server treats this as an invalid login attempt which can result in a Denial of Service (DoS) for the user if services like fail2ban are used.

02Affected products

Vendor	Product	Versions
n	a / n/a	n/a

03Active exploitation status

Not currently listed on the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. EPSS is the best forward-looking signal — see the EPSS row above.

04Recommended remediation

• Patch to a fixed version listed in the vendor advisory (see references below).
• Mitigate with WAF rules, network egress filters, or feature flags where the patch is not yet available.
• Hunt historical logs for exploitation indicators — see Detection signatures below.

05Technical details

For the full vendor write-up, exploit chains, and reference implementations, see the references list in section 09.

06Detection signatures

Ask SARA in chat to draft a starting detection for this CVE in your stack of choice.

07Related CVEs

No directly-cited follow-up CVEs in the KB record for this advisory. The references list in section 09 carries the vendor cross-references.

08Timeline

• Published: 2022-12-05T00:00:00.000Z
• Last modified: 2025-04-24T14:34:43.998Z

09References

• docs.ssh-mitm.at — https://docs.ssh-mitm.at/vulnerabilities/CVE-2022-38337.html
• mobaxterm.mobatek.net — https://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/download-home-edition.html