DigitalOcean Droplet Agent: Command Injection via Metadata Service Endpoint

Exploitation

No confirmed exploitation recorded. Patch Next marks exploitation only from CISA KEV.

CVSS

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

EPSS

• CVE-2026-24516: 2.60% estimated exploitation activity in the next 30 days; percentile 85.37 (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-03). This is a model estimate, not proof of exploitation or customer exposure.

As published by the source; long descriptions are shortened.

A command injection vulnerability exists in DigitalOcean Droplet Agent through 1.3.2. The troubleshooting actioner component (internal/troubleshooting/actioner/actioner.go) processes metadata from the metadata service endpoint and executes commands specified in the TroubleshootingAgent.Requesting array without adequate input validation. While the code validates that artifacts exist in the validInvestigationArtifacts map, it fails to sanitize the actual command content after the "command:" prefix. This allows an attacker who can control metadata responses to inject and execute arbitrary OS commands with root privileges. The attack is triggered by sending a TCP packet with specific sequence numbers to the SSH port, which causes the agent to fetch metadata from http://169.254.169.254/metadata/v1.json. The vulnerability affects the command execution flow in internal/troubleshooting/actioner/actioner.go (insufficient validation), internal/troubleshooting/command/exec.go (direct…

Published by the source

23 Mar 2026, 18:30 UTC

Last modified by the source

25 Mar 2026, 22:05 UTC

Source last checked

26 Oct 2026, 15:18 UTC

1. Revision 1 · created · 26 Oct 2026

   Published from ghsa record GHSA-fh3m-562m-w4f6

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# Patch Next advisory brief: CVE-2026-24516

Advisory: DigitalOcean Droplet Agent: Command Injection via Metadata Service Endpoint
IDs: CVE-2026-24516, GHSA-fh3m-562m-w4f6
Record: https://patchnext.com/advisories/cve-2026-24516 (revision 1, source checked 26 Oct 2026, 15:18 UTC)
Inventory: none attached. This brief comes from a public page and does not say whether any deployment is affected.
Severity: High (CVSS 8.8)
Exploitation: no confirmed exploitation recorded. Patch Next confirms exploitation only from CISA KEV.
Vendor response: Vendor response not established. A vendor fix does not mean a deployment is fixed.

## Affected components
- Go github.com/digitalocean/droplet-agent: affected <= 0.0.0-20260107162243-1101ffcb5672

## Suggested inspection (read-only)
- Go github.com/digitalocean/droplet-agent: check the installed version with your package manager.

## Supported action
No complete vendor fix is recorded. Follow the primary source's mitigation guidance and check this record again before closing anything.

## Required regression checks
- Run the test suite and a production build.
- Exercise the features that depend on github.com/digitalocean/droplet-agent.
- Repeat the inspection and confirm that only fixed versions remain installed.

## Rollback considerations
- Keep the previous lockfile and deployment artifact. Rolling back reinstates the vulnerable version, so apply any documented mitigation while you fix forward.

## Unresolved questions
- Which deployments run an affected version?
- Exploitation status can change. Check again before lowering the priority.
- Mark the work resolved only after the fixed version is verified in production.

## Sources
- Verified: https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-fh3m-562m-w4f6 (GitHub-reviewed advisory GHSA-fh3m-562m-w4f6 lists affected ranges: Go github.com/digitalocean/droplet-agent >=0 <=0.0.0-20260107162243-1101ffcb5672)

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