Amazon EC2 SSM Agent Flaw Patched After Privilege Escalation via Path Traversal
Apr 08, 2025
Cloud Security / Vulnerability
Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a now-patched security flaw in the Amazon EC2 Simple Systems Manager (SSM) Agent that, if successfully exploited, could permit an attacker to achieve privilege escalation and code execution. The vulnerability could permit an attacker to create directories in unintended locations on the filesystem, execute arbitrary scripts with root privileges, and likely escalate privileges or perform malicious activities by writing files to sensitive areas of the system, Cymulate said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Amazon SSM Agent is a component of Amazon Web Services (AWS) that enables administrators to remotely manage, configure, and execute commands on EC2 instances and on-premises servers. The software processes commands and tasks defined in SSM Documents , which can include one or more plugins, each of which is responsible for carrying out specific tasks, such as running shell scripts or automating deployment or configura...