How severe is CVE-2023-40044?

CVE-2023-40044 has a CVSS 3.1 base score of 10 (CRITICAL). EPSS estimates a 90.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days. It is listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog.

CVE-2023-40044: WS_FTP Server Ad Hoc Transfer Module .NET

CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities

Progress WS_FTP Server Deserialization of Untrusted Data Vulnerability is confirmed as actively exploited and is listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

Added to KEV

2023-10-05

Remediation due

2023-10-26

Ransomware

Known use

Required action
Apply mitigations per vendor instructions or discontinue use of the product if mitigations are unavailable.

CISA notes
https://community.progress.com/s/article/WS-FTP-Server-Critical-Vulnerability-September-2023; https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-40044

Description

In WS_FTP Server versions prior to 8.7.4 and 8.8.2, a pre-authenticated attacker could leverage a .NET deserialization vulnerability in the Ad Hoc Transfer module to execute remote commands on the underlying WS_FTP Server operating system.

Severity

CVSS 3.1 · CNA10 CRITICAL

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H

SSVC · CISA-ADP

Exploitationactive

Automatableyes

Technical impacttotal

Exploitation Context

as of October 17, 2026

All KEV statistics→

CISA added CVE-2023-40044 to the KEV catalog 8 days after its CVE record was published. The median for entries added in 2023 is 12 days.
It is one of 9 Progress entries in the CISA KEV catalog, and one of 2 added in 2023.
Its current EPSS score (90.4%) is higher than that of 73% of CISA KEV entries.

Affected Products

Vendor	Product	Affected versions
Progress Software Corporation	Progress Software Corporation WS_FTP Server	8.8.0 to <8.8.2 8.7.0 to <8.7.4

References

8 Links

Vendor advisories

https://community.progress.com/s/article/WS-FTP-Server-Critical-Vulnerability-September-2023

Product pages

https://www.progress.com/ws_ftp

Other references

Record Details

Published

2023-09-27

Last updated

2025-10-21

Assigner (CNA)

ProgressSoftware

Credited to

Shubham Shah - Assetnote; Sean Yeoh - Assetnote

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Tool categories

Application Security Tools Penetration Testing Tools

CVE record data © The MITRE Corporation, used under the CVE Terms of Use. Exploited-in-the-wild data from the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (CC0). Exploit prediction scores by FIRST EPSS (first.org/epss). This site is not endorsed or certified by MITRE, NVD, CISA, or FIRST.

CVE-2023-40044