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SAP warns of maximum severity 'OVERPASS' kernel vulnerability

read original get Hacking: The Art of Exploitation, 2nd Edition (Jon Erickson) → more articles
Why This Matters

A maximum-severity buffer overflow in SAP's Kernel (CVE-2026-44756, 'OVERPASS') lets unauthenticated attackers run commands with admin privileges on SAP hosts, and Onapsis estimates over 10,000 internet-facing systems are potentially exposed. Because SAP runs core financial and operational processes for large enterprises, a full host compromise means direct access to business-critical data. A second critical flaw, missing authentication in the NetWeaver Message Server ('S4GET'), compounds the urgency for admins to patch fast.

Key Takeaways
Worth a Look

Hacking: The Art of Exploitation, 2nd Edition (Jon Erickson) — OVERPASS is a textbook buffer overflow in SAP's Extended Passport Protocol library, and this No Starch Press classic is the go-to introduction to exactly how memory corruption bugs like it work. Jon Erickson walks through stack smashing, shellcode and defenses with hands-on examples, so defenders patching internet-facing SAP hosts can understand what an attacker is actually doing. A great desk reference for anyone on an appsec or SOC team.

See Hacking: The Art of Exploitation, 2nd Edition (Jon Erickson) on Amazon → Affiliate link — we may earn a commission on purchases, at no extra cost to you. Product picked by AI based on this article; it is not a tested recommendation.

SAP has addressed 20 vulnerabilities across multiple products in its September 2026 security updates, including a maximum-severity memory corruption flaw in the SAP Kernel code.

Tracked as CVE-2026-44756 and dubbed OVERPASS by Onapsis security researchers who reported it, the vulnerability stems from a classic buffer overflow weakness in the Extended Passport Protocol (EPP) processing library.

Successful exploitation lets unprivileged threat actors run arbitrary commands on vulnerable SAP hosts with administrative privileges, leading to full compromise of the underlying SAP processes and business data.

The flaw can be exploited over SAP Internet Communication Manager (ICM), the networking component of the SAP Application Server that connects the SAP System (SAP NetWeaver Application Server) to the Internet via HTTP, HTTPS, and SMTP.

According to Onapsis' estimates, more than 10,000 Internet-facing SAP systems use the vulnerable component and are potentially exposed to attacks exploiting the CVE-2026-44756 flaw.

"A targeted search using high-fidelity fingerprints identifies more than 10,000 unique Internet-facing IP addresses presenting an SAP web interface reachable from the public Internet, and that figure is conservative," Onapsis CTO JP Perez-Etchegoyen said on Tuesday.

"It counts only HTTP-reachable systems and materially undercounts the SAP Web Dispatcher, which proxies its backend and returns no distinguishing SAP banner on its root path, making it structurally hard for Internet-wide scanners to attribute."

S4GET, logic flaw in SAP's NetWeaver Message Server

Today, SAP also addressed CVE-2026-58240, a critical missing authentication vulnerability in the SAP NetWeaver Message Server named S4GET by Onapsis Research Labs.

After successful exploitation, unauthenticated attackers can access the entire SAP system cluster and execute malicious payloads and arbitrary commands remotely across the network.

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