What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2018-16158

• Severity: critical (CVSS 9.8 v3.0)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 34.9% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2018-08-30 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-798

Description

Eaton Power Xpert Meter 4000, 6000, and 8000 devices before 13.4.0.10 have a single SSH private key across different customers' installations and do not properly restrict access to this key, which makes it easier for remote attackers to perform SSH logins (to uid 0) via the PubkeyAuthentication option.

Affected products

• Eaton Power Xpert Meter 4000 Firmware: before 13.4.0.10 — fixed in 13.4.0.10
• Eaton Power Xpert Meter 6000 Firmware: before 13.4.0.10 — fixed in 13.4.0.10
• Eaton Power Xpert Meter 8000 Firmware: before 13.4.0.10 — fixed in 13.4.0.10

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Eaton Power Xpert Meter 4000 Firmware 13.4.0.10; Eaton Power Xpert Meter 6000 Firmware 13.4.0.10; Eaton Power Xpert Meter 8000 Firmware 13.4.0.10. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• http://www.eaton.com/content/dam/eaton/company/news-insights/cybersecurity/security-bulletins/PXM-Advisory.pdf
• https://www.ctrlu.net/vuln/0006.html
• https://github.com/BrianWGray/msf/blob/master/exploits/linux/ssh/eaton_known_privkey.rb
• http://www.eaton.com/content/dam/eaton/company/news-insights/cybersecurity/security-bulletins/PXM-Advisory.pdf
• https://www.ctrlu.net/vuln/0006.html

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