CVE-2026-79856

Summary

A buffer overflow in the PAPI protocol of AOS-8 allows unauthenticated remote attackers to bypass authentication and gain administrative access due to insufficient bounds checking when processing protocol messages.

Exploitability

Exploitation is highly reliable for a remote attacker with network access to the PAPI service, requiring no authentication or user interaction.

Blast radius

Successful exploitation grants full administrative control over the affected system, enabling complete data compromise, configuration tampering, and potential lateral movement within the infrastructure.

Detection

Look for unusually long PAPI protocol messages exceeding documented length limits in network captures or proxy logs; no host-side logging of malformed PAPI requests is reported by the vendor advisory.

Prioritized remediation

Upgrade to AOS-8 version 8.10.200 or later, as patched by Aruba in advisory HPSBMA04327 (released 2026-09-15).

Analysis generated locally by garnet-coder (no data left the box). AI-assisted — verify against primary sources before acting.