Archive
044
EXH-0442026Fictional reconstruction

Captive Portal RCE

6 May 2026. CVE-2026-0300 reaches NVD the same day CISA adds it to the KEV catalog: unauthenticated RCE on PA-Series and VM-Series when the User-ID Authentication Portal touches untrusted networks.

Type
Defensive / IR
Difficulty
Advanced
Era
2020s
Time
10 min

Briefing

A firewall template placed User-ID Authentication Portal response pages on an untrusted interface. You work the real defender loop: config exposure, inbound scan, threat log, and an emergency commit that removes the portal from the internet-facing zone.

Your role

Network security engineer validating exposure on internet-adjacent firewalls.

Objective

Prove whether the captive portal was exposed, trace the scan to a threat log hit, then verify the zone-level workaround.

Terminal environment

user
responder
host
jump-netops
cwd
/home/neteng/panos-ir
steps
8
Enter the terminalAbout 10 minutesSafe simulation

Safety note. This is a safe reconstruction. All systems, files, hosts, credentials, and outputs are simulated. Do not use these techniques on systems you do not own or have explicit permission to test.