Detection: SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer Exploitation Attempt

Updated Date: 2025-05-02 ID: a583b9f1-9c3a-4402-9441-b981654dea6c Author: Michael Haag, Splunk Type: Hunting Product: Splunk Enterprise Security

Description

Detects potential exploitation attempts targeting CVE-2025-31324, a critical unauthenticated file upload vulnerability in SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer. This flaw allows remote attackers to send specially crafted POST requests to the /developmentserver/metadatauploader endpoint, enabling arbitrary file uploads—commonly webshells—resulting in full system compromise. The detection looks for HTTP HEAD or POST requests with a 200 OK status to sensitive Visual Composer endpoints, which may indicate reconnaissance or active exploitation. Successful exploitation can lead to attackers gaining privileged access, deploying malware, and impacting business-critical SAP resources. Immediate patching and investigation of suspicious activity are strongly recommended, as this vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild.

Search

1
2| tstats count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime from datamodel=Web.Web where (Web.url IN ("/CTCWebService/CTCWebServiceBean", "/VisualComposer/services/DesignTimeService", "/ctc/CTCWebService/CTCWebServiceBean")) AND Web.http_method IN ("HEAD", "POST") AND Web.status=200 by Web.src, Web.dest, Web.http_method, Web.url, Web.http_user_agent, Web.url_length, sourcetype 
3| `drop_dm_object_name("Web")` 
4| eval action=case(http_method="HEAD", "Recon/Probe", http_method="POST", "Possible Exploitation") 
5| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)` 
6| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)` 
7| table firstTime, lastTime, src, dest, http_method, action, url, user_agent, url_length, sourcetype 
8| `sap_netweaver_visual_composer_exploitation_attempt_filter`

Data Source

Name	Platform	Sourcetype	Source
Suricata	N/A	`'suricata'`	`'suricata'`

Macros Used

Name	Value
security_content_ctime	`convert timeformat="%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S" ctime($field$)`
sap_netweaver_visual_composer_exploitation_attempt_filter	`search *`

sap_netweaver_visual_composer_exploitation_attempt_filter is an empty macro by default. It allows the user to filter out any results (false positives) without editing the SPL.

Annotations

- MITRE ATT&CK

+ Kill Chain Phases

+ NIST

+ CIS

- Threat Actors

ID	Technique	Tactic
T1190	Exploit Public-Facing Application	Initial Access

Delivery

DE.AE

CIS 13

Default Configuration

This detection is configured by default in Splunk Enterprise Security to run with the following settings:

Setting	Value
Disabled	true
Cron Schedule	`0 * * * *`
Earliest Time	`-70m@m`
Latest Time	`-10m@m`
Schedule Window	`auto`
Creates Risk Event	False

This configuration file applies to all detections of type hunting.

Implementation

Ensure that the Web data model is accelerated and populated with web server or web proxy logs capturing HTTP request and response data. This search relies on HTTP method, status code, and URL path fields to identify suspicious access patterns against SAP NetWeaver endpoints.

Known False Positives

Some legitimate administrative activity may access SAP NetWeaver services. However, HEAD or POST requests directly resulting in a 200 OK to Visual Composer endpoints are uncommon and should be investigated carefully.

Associated Analytic Story

SAP NetWeaver Exploitation

References

Detection Testing

Test Type	Status	Dataset	Source	Sourcetype
Validation	✅ Passing	N/A	N/A	N/A
Unit	✅ Passing	Dataset	`suricata`	`suricata`
Integration	✅ Passing	Dataset	`suricata`	`suricata`

Replay any dataset to Splunk Enterprise by using our replay.py tool or the UI. Alternatively you can replay a dataset into a Splunk Attack Range

Source: GitHub | Version: 2