A command injection vulnerability exists in DigitalOcean Droplet Agent through 1.3.2.
Key facts
- Attack vector
- Network
- Privileges required
- Low
- User interaction
- None
- Attack complexity
- Low
- Impact type
- Code execution
- Confidentiality · integrity · availability
- High · High · High
- Fix status
- No fix listed
Attack profile from CVSS 3.1 · CISA ADP. Fix status from CNA and GitHub. Impact type from CWE-94.
Summary
A command injection vulnerability exists in DigitalOcean Droplet Agent through 1.3.2. The troubleshooting actioner component (internal/troubleshooting/actioner/actioner.go) processes metadata from the metadata service endpoint and executes commands specified in the TroubleshootingAgent.Requesting array without adequate input validation. While the code validates that artifacts exist in the validInvestigationArtifacts map, it fails to sanitize the actual command content after the "command:" prefix. This allows an attacker who can control metadata responses to inject and execute arbitrary OS commands with root privileges. The attack is triggered by sending a TCP packet with specific sequence numbers to the SSH port, which causes the agent to fetch metadata from http://169.254.169.254/metadata/v1.json. The vulnerability affects the command execution flow in internal/troubleshooting/actioner/actioner.go (insufficient validation), internal/troubleshooting/command/exec.go (direct exec.CommandContext call), and internal/troubleshooting/command/command.go (command parsing without sanitization). This can lead to complete system compromise, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, and potential lateral movement across cloud infrastructure.
Why it matters now
SSVC decision points
CISA ADP · SSVC 2.0.3
- Exploitation
- Poc
- Automatable
- No
- Technical impact
- Total
The decision (Track, Attend, Act) also depends on your mission and well-being impact; see CISA's SSVC guide.
Affected products
| Vendor | Product | Affected versions | Fixed in | Status | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | all versions | — | No fix listed | CNA |
| — | github.com/digitalocean/droplet-agent (Go) | up to 0.0.0-20260107162243-1101ffcb5672 | — | No fix listed | GHSA-fh3m-562m-w4f6 |
- — Vendor— Affected all versions Fixed in — No fix listed CNA
- github.com/digitalocean/droplet-agent (Go) Vendor— Affected up to 0.0.0-20260107162243-1101ffcb5672 Fixed in — No fix listed GHSA-fh3m-562m-w4f6
Remediation
No fixed version listed by the sources yet.
Timeline
- 2026-10-02 Threatist record created from CVE-2026-24516
- 2026-10-03 Alias added: GHSA-fh3m-562m-w4f6
References
Other 5
- https://github.com/digitalocean/droplet-agent/blob/main/internal/troubleshooting/actioner/actioner.go
- https://github.com/digitalocean/droplet-agent/blob/main/internal/troubleshooting/command/exec.go
- https://github.com/digitalocean/droplet-agent/blob/main/internal/troubleshooting/command/command.go
- https://github.com/poxsky/CVE-2026-24516-DigitalOcean-RCE
- https://github.com/digitalocean/droplet-agent
Sources
- CVE-2026-24516 · CVE Program
- CVE-2026-24516 · NVD
- FIRST EPSS
- GHSA-fh3m-562m-w4f6 · GitHub Advisory Database · CC BY 4.0
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