CVE-2023-22523: 
Jira Assets Discovery Cloud vulnerability analysis and mitigation

CVE-2023-22523 is a critical Remote Code Execution (RCE) vulnerability discovered in Atlassian's Assets Discovery application. The vulnerability was disclosed on December 5, 2023, affecting all versions prior to Assets Discovery 3.2.0-cloud for Cloud environments and 6.2.0 for Data Center and Server installations. The vulnerability exists in the communication between the Assets Discovery application (formerly known as Insight Discovery) and the Assets Discovery agent, potentially affecting Jira Service Management Cloud, Data Center, and Server deployments (Atlassian Advisory).

The vulnerability has been assigned a Critical severity rating with a CVSS score of 9.8 (CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H), indicating the highest level of severity. The vulnerability specifically affects the communication channel between the Assets Discovery application and its agents, which are used for network scanning and asset discovery purposes. The default communication port used by the agents is 51337 (Atlassian Advisory, NVD).

If successfully exploited, this vulnerability allows an attacker to perform privileged Remote Code Execution on machines where the Assets Discovery agent is installed. This means attackers could potentially execute arbitrary code with elevated privileges on affected systems, leading to complete system compromise (Atlassian Advisory).

Atlassian recommends a three-step mitigation process: 1) Uninstall all Assets Discovery agents immediately, 2) Apply the Assets Discovery application patch to version 3.2.0-cloud or 6.2.0, and 3) Reinstall the agents with the updated version. For organizations unable to immediately uninstall agents, a temporary mitigation involves blocking port 51337 (or custom configured ports) used for agent communication. However, this is not a permanent solution and full patching is required (Atlassian Advisory).