CVE-2025-61624: Fortinet Multiple Products Path Traversal Vulnerability

According to The Hacker News, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) added CVE-2025-61624 to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog on October 16, 2026, and required federal agencies to apply the fixes by October 19, 2026.[1] It says an already authenticated user with an administrator profile and read and write permissions[2] can use crafted command parameters to write or delete files anywhere on the system.SecNews also reports that NVD lists affected versions of FortiOS, FortiProxy, FortiSwitchManager, and FortiPAM.[2]The Hacker News quoted Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 researchers Daniel Gott and Shawn Westfall, who said "PEERSTITCH leaves no persistent binary on disk, opens no listening ports and initiates no outbound network connections."[1]SecNews reports that in the campaign Unit 42 described, CVE-2025-61624 was used as a separate privilege escalation step to install PEERSTITCH on FortiOS devices.[2] It adds that the initial access was attributed to a different vulnerability.[2] SecNews says NIST gives a score of 6.5 and Fortinet gives a score of 6.0[2], while The Hacker News lists a CVSS score of 5.4[1].According to The Hacker News, the flaw was patched by Fortinet in April 2026.[1] SecNews notes that the addition is not accompanied by a new software update.[2]