CVE-2026-104628 in Netco Design
Summary
by MITRE • 10/09/2026
Satel Netco Design versions prior to v2.1.7 contains an inefficient regular expression complexity vulnerability. An authenticated user with Viewer privileges could submit crafted search input that causes excessive processing, potentially degrading the availability of the application.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 10/09/2026
The vulnerability identified in Satel Netco Design software versions prior to 2.1.7 represents a classic instance of Regular Expression Denial of Service, commonly referred to as ReDoS. This type of flaw stems from inefficient regular expression complexity within the application's search functionality. The core technical issue lies in how the underlying regex engine processes user-supplied input strings that are specifically crafted to trigger catastrophic backtracking. When an attacker submits a maliciously constructed string, the algorithm may enter an exponential time complexity loop while attempting to match patterns against the input data. This behavior is not immediately apparent during normal usage but becomes critical when faced with adversarial inputs designed to exploit the specific logic of the regular expression implementation.
From a technical perspective, this vulnerability allows for resource exhaustion on the server side without requiring elevated privileges or complex exploitation chains beyond authentication and access to the search feature. The requirement for an authenticated user with Viewer privileges indicates that while the attack vector is restricted by identity management controls, it remains accessible to any legitimate user within the system's trust boundary. This distinction is crucial because it classifies the vulnerability as a potential threat from insider threats or compromised low-privilege accounts rather than purely external unauthenticated attackers. The excessive processing caused by the crafted search input consumes significant CPU cycles and memory resources on the application server, leading to performance degradation that can cascade into broader system instability.
The operational impact of this flaw is primarily centered around availability, which aligns with the CIA triad's emphasis on maintaining service continuity. By triggering prolonged computation times through regex backtracking, an attacker can effectively perform a denial-of-service attack against the Satel Netco Design application itself or potentially affect other services sharing the same server resources if they are co-located in a multi-tenant environment. This degradation prevents legitimate users from accessing critical monitoring and control functions provided by the software, which is particularly concerning given that such systems often manage physical security infrastructure where timely access to data can be operationally significant. The inability of the application to handle malformed input gracefully results in service unavailability until the process times out or is manually restarted, disrupting business operations dependent on real-time system status updates.
In terms of industry standard classifications, this vulnerability maps directly to CWE-400, which covers Uncontrolled Resource Consumption, and more specifically CWE-1335, Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity. The exploitation technique falls under the MITRE ATT&CK framework's Tactic TA0004: Privilege Escalation or Impact, specifically within the sub-tactic of Denial of Service (T1499). Although the initial access requires authentication, the impact leverages resource exhaustion to degrade service quality. Security architects should recognize that even low-privilege accounts can be weaponized for availability attacks if input validation and algorithmic efficiency are not rigorously enforced at the application layer.
Mitigation strategies must focus on both immediate patching and long-term defensive coding practices. The primary remediation is to upgrade Satel Netco Design to version 2.1.7 or later, where the developers have presumably refactored the regular expressions to eliminate catastrophic backtracking paths. For environments unable to immediately apply patches, network-level controls such as rate limiting on search endpoints can help mitigate the impact by restricting the frequency of requests from a single source. Additionally implementing input length limits and timeout mechanisms for server-side processing can prevent any single request from monopolizing system resources indefinitely. From a development lifecycle perspective, this incident underscores the importance of static application security testing (SAST) tools that specifically detect regex complexity issues, as well as dynamic analysis during penetration testing to identify inputs that trigger excessive resource consumption before deployment to production environments.