Three Ivanti Connect Secure Zero-Days Chained for Unauthenticated Root, One Still Unpatched

An attacker chained three zero-day flaws in Ivanti Connect Secure to run commands as root on a fully patched VPN appliance without logging in. Security firm Volexity disclosed the chain on October 13, 2026. Ivanti has released fixes for two of the three flaws. The third, a privilege escalation, is still unpatched.

Volexity found the attack on one customer's appliance running version 22.8R2.4, which was fully patched at the time. The attacker, tracked as UTA0576, began exploiting it on October 3, ten days before public disclosure. Ivanti says it is aware of "limited exploitation in the wild" and has told customers on affected versions to "act immediately." Neither company said how many customers were attacked.

How the chain works

The first two flaws are an authentication bypass and a remote code execution flaw, tracked together as CVE-2026-104935. Combined, they let an unauthenticated attacker run code as the appliance's cgi-server user. The third flaw is a privilege escalation that raises that access to root, according to Volexity, which reported all three flaws to Ivanti.

Ivanti rates CVE-2026-104935 at 8.6 out of 10 on the CVSS scale. In its own entry in the CVE record, CISA marks exploitation as "active" and the technical impact as "total."

Affected versions

The CVE record Ivanti filed gives the version boundaries for Connect Secure:

• Affected: Connect Secure "before version 25.1.3.0"
• Not affected: version 22.7R2.14 "or prior"
• Listed as unaffected: versions 22.8R2.5, 25.1.3.0 and 25.1.3.1

The release notes for 25.1.3.0 are dated July 2026, so customers already on that version are outside the range the CVE record gives. The appliance in Volexity's case ran 22.8R2.4, and the CVE record lists 22.8R2.5 as unaffected. Ivanti's security advisory carries the full detail on affected versions and fixes.

Why the Integrity Checker Tool misses it

Ivanti tells customers to upgrade and to run its Integrity Checker Tool regularly. Volexity says that tool does not detect this chain. The exploit changes library code only in memory and restores the configuration data it alters, and the attacker took additional steps to stay hidden from the tool.

The attacker also left no backdoor or web shell behind. Instead, UTA0576 reran the entire exploit chain for each command. For defenders, the consequence is that a clean Integrity Checker Tool result does not rule out compromise by this chain. Volexity says confirming a compromise takes forensic investigation, including network and memory forensics.

Indicators from the investigated incident

Volexity published these signs from the single incident it investigated:

• URL path: /dana-na/auth/url_default/welcome.cgi, requested in large numbers
• HTTP header: X-DSCGI-PATH on those requests, with a value that does not match the URL path
• Directory: /data/.icscap/
• IP address: 108.165.147[.]64, the host the attacker used

All four come from one intrusion. Volexity has not said whether other incidents share the same path, directory or infrastructure.

What the attacker did with root

The VPN appliance was the entry point, and the directory behind it was the objective. In the incident Volexity investigated, the attacker stole stored credentials from the appliance, including LDAP domain credentials. UTA0576 then searched Active Directory for passwords and ran password-spraying attacks against its accounts.

Volexity assessed with low confidence that UTA0576's motive is criminal, not espionage. The low confidence rating matters: the attribution rests on limited evidence from one case.

Vendor guidance and the other fixes in the same post

Ivanti's guidance for Connect Secure is to upgrade to a fixed version and run the Integrity Checker Tool regularly. No interim mitigation has been published for the pending privilege escalation fix.

The same Ivanti post covers two other products, each with a flaw Ivanti rates 9.9 out of 10: CVE-2026-106042 in Xtraction before version 2026.4, and CVE-2026-109412 in Neurons Patch for Intune. Ivanti said it is not aware of either flaw being exploited.

The takeaway for security leaders is narrow and concrete. A fully patched edge appliance was rooted without credentials, exploitation began ten days before disclosure, the vendor's own integrity tool does not detect the technique, and one of the three flaws remains unpatched. In the one confirmed case, the damage extended past the appliance to domain credentials and Active Directory accounts.