In the ever-evolving battlefield of cybersecurity, December 2025 has kicked off with a bang – or rather, a frantic scramble for patches. Three major vendors, Fortinet, Ivanti, and SAP, have just dropped urgent security updates to slam the door on critical vulnerabilities that could hand attackers the keys to your network.
We’re talking authentication bypasses, remote code execution, and code injections that scream “enterprise nightmare.” If your organization relies on these tools – and let’s face it, many do – ignoring this could be a costly mistake. In this post, we’ll break down the threats, the fixes, and why you can’t afford to hit snooze on Patch Tuesday (or Wednesday, in this case).
Fortinet: Bypassing the Gates with a Forged Signature
Fortinet, a cornerstone in firewall and security appliance deployments, is leading the charge with fixes for two high-impact flaws in their authentication stack. Tracked as CVE-2025-59718 and CVE-2025-59719, both clock in at a blistering CVSS score of 9.8 – that’s “critical” territory where unauthenticated attackers can waltz in without breaking a sweat.
The culprit? An improper verification of cryptographic signatures (CWE-347) lurking in products like FortiOS, FortiWeb, FortiProxy, and FortiSwitchManager. If you’ve got FortiCloud SSO enabled, a crafty bad actor could spoof a SAML message and bypass login entirely, potentially gaining admin-level access to sensitive configs. No evidence of wild exploitation yet, but in a world where zero-days sell for top dollar on the dark web, don’t bet on it staying that way.
Quick Fix: Disable the FortiCloud SSO login pronto. Head to System > Settings and toggle off “Allow administrative login using FortiCloud SSO,” or fire up the CLI with config system global; set admin-forticloud-sso-login disable; end. Then, apply the latest patches from Fortinet’s advisory. If you’re in a large environment, prioritize this over your morning coffee – it could save your bacon.
Ivanti: From Dashboard Poison to Full Code Takeover
Ivanti’s Endpoint Manager (EPM) – the unsung hero (or villain, depending on the day) of IT asset management – isn’t far behind. Their December update tackles four nasty bugs, headlined by CVE-2025-10573, a stored cross-site scripting (XSS) beast with a CVSS of 9.6. An unauthenticated remote attacker could join fake “managed endpoints” to your system, poisoning the admin dashboard and tricking users into running malicious JavaScript in their session context. It requires a bit of user interaction, but that’s cold comfort when admins are clicking through reports.
The plot thickens with three high-severity siblings: CVE-2025-13659, CVE-2025-13661, and CVE-2025-13662, all enabling arbitrary code execution for unauthenticated remotes. The last one? A cryptographic signature verification flop in patch management that could let attackers slip in rogue updates. Affected versions are anything before EPM 2024 SU4 SR1, and Ivanti reports no in-the-wild attacks – yet.
Pro Tip: Roll out the patch to 2024 SU4 SR1 immediately. For extra layers, audit your endpoint joins and enable stricter input validation on dashboards. Ivanti’s been transparent here, which is more than some vendors manage, but transparency doesn’t patch holes – action does.
SAP: Injection Attacks Targeting the Enterprise Heart
Rounding out the trio, SAP’s December security bulletin packs 14 vulnerabilities, three of which are critical showstoppers that could inject chaos into your ERP backbone. CVE-2025-42880 (CVSS 9.9) hits SAP Solution Manager with a code injection vulnerability via remote-enabled function modules – authenticated attackers (think: compromised insider or phishing victim) could execute arbitrary code, turning your monitoring tool into a backdoor.
Then there’s CVE-2025-55754 (CVSS 9.6) in SAP Commerce Cloud, stemming from inherited Apache Tomcat flaws that open doors to remote exploits. And don’t sleep on CVE-2025-42928 (CVSS 9.1) in the jConnect SDK for Sybase ASE: a deserialization bug requiring elevated privileges but delivering remote code execution with specially crafted inputs. These aren’t hypotheticals – SAP Solution Manager’s central role in so many orgs makes it a prime target for supply-chain style attacks.
Action Plan: Dive into SAP’s Support Portal for the December patches and apply them ASAP, starting with the high-CVSS ones flagged by researchers like Onapsis. Test in staging, segment your network, and run vulnerability scans to catch stragglers. Remember, unpatched SAP can cascade failures across your entire business ops.
The Bigger Picture: Patch Fast, Sleep Better
This triple-threat from Fortinet, Ivanti, and SAP isn’t just a blip – it’s a stark reminder that even battle-hardened enterprise tools need constant vigilance. With CVSS scores pushing 10.0 and risks like RCE and auth bypass, the exploitation window is shrinking by the hour. No confirmed attacks in the wild (fingers crossed), but history shows that’s no guarantee.
My advice? Treat these updates like a fire drill: urgent, thorough, and followed by a review. Automate where you can, train your teams on phishing red flags, and keep an eye on vendor advisories. In cybersecurity, “urgent” is just code for “do it yesterday.”
Stay safe out there, folks. Got questions on implementing these? Drop a comment below – let’s keep the conversation going.
Sources: Ivanti Security Advisory, SAP Security Notes.