CVE-2022-3913: 
Nexpose vulnerability analysis and mitigation

Rapid7 Nexpose and InsightVM versions 6.6.82 through 6.6.177 contained a certificate validation vulnerability (CVE-2022-3913) where the products failed to validate the certificate of the update server when downloading updates. The vulnerability was discovered in November 2022 and was fixed in version 6.6.178, released on February 1st, 2023 (Rapid7 Blog).

The vulnerability is classified as CWE-295 (Improper Certificate Validation). The issue specifically involved a failure in validating certificates during the update process, which could potentially allow an attacker to bypass security measures during software updates (NVD).

The vulnerability could potentially allow an attacker in a privileged network position to provide malicious updates to Nexpose or InsightVM installations. This could lead to the introduction of unauthorized functionality into the affected systems (Rapid7 Blog).

Exploitation of this vulnerability requires an attacker to be in a privileged position on the network or have access to the local computer running Nexpose or InsightVM with sufficient privileges to initiate an update. Alternatively, an attacker would need to convince a Nexpose administrator to apply a maliciously-crafted update through social engineering (Rapid7 Blog).

The vulnerability was addressed in version 6.6.178 released on February 1st, 2023. Administrators are advised to update to this version or later. For those concerned about being targeted during updates, Rapid7 recommends disabling automatic updates and using the documented 'Managing Updates without an Internet Connection' procedure after manually validating the authenticity of the update package (Rapid7 Blog, Nexpose Release Notes).