CCT 309: React-To-Shell and Practice CISSP Questions - Domain 7.6

One unauthenticated request should not be all it takes to compromise your app—but with React-To-Shell, that’s the reality many teams are facing. We unpack what this vulnerability hits across React server components and Next.js app router setups, why default configs can be enough to fall, and how active threat actors are already abusing it. From construction to entertainment to cloud-native platforms, the exposure is broad, the proofs are reliable and the window for safe procrastination has closed.

We share a clear action plan: upgrade affected versions now, rotate secrets that touch your React servers, and turn on relevant WAF protections from providers like Cloudflare and Microsoft. Then we widen the lens to the bigger lesson: security testing that looks mature on paper can still miss API edges and misconfigurations for months. You’ll hear why credentialed vulnerability scans with passive monitoring are the lowest-impact way to surface issues in production, how “medium” findings can chain into critical compromise, and when external assessors deliver the most value for resilience rather than routine compliance.

To make testing count without breaking customer-facing services, we walk through purple teaming—pairing red team attacks with blue team collaboration—to validate both technical controls and security awareness. We cover scoping rules that prevent disruption, scenarios that mirror current tradecraft, and practical CISSP takeaways for domain coverage on assessments, software security and third-party risk. If your web stack touches React, or your program relies on scans and annual pen tests alone, this is your checklist and your nudge to act.

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SPEAKER_01: 0:25 

Good morning everybody. It's Sean Gerber with CISSP Cyber Training and hope you all are having a beautifully blessed day today. Today is Thursday. It is CISSP question Thursday. And today we're going to focus specifically around domain 7.6. But if you're also listening on this Thursday, it is Christmas. And so I was getting ready to say Thanksgiving, but no, that has come and gone. No, this is Christmas. So if you're listening to it, you are definitely dedicated and die hard to get your CISSP done, which is awesome because that's going to take you into the new year, which is pretty exciting. My family here, we're just got the whole family starting to come into town and we have grandkids and other kids. I've got seven children altogether. So uh it is a full house that's starting to be very nice. I enjoy that. We have a our house we built was was a bit larger because we had all these kids, and now that it's filled up, it's really nice. Otherwise, it gets kind of there's a lot of room here when you only just have the wife and myself. But that you're not really caring about that right now at this point. You want to know what's going on with the CISSP. So before we get into the overall questions for today, one of the things I saw, and I was talking to one of my consultant friends, uh, about a recent exploit that is out there called React to Shell. Um, I don't know if you're aware of it or not. I was just briefed of it just yesterday. I I didn't even know anything about it. But it is an issue that's going to run very similar to the log4j type of situation that occurred many years ago. And uh it's gonna have that big of an impact. The reason one of the main reasons why it has such a large impact is because the attackers really don't have to do much of anything. And we'll kind of go over just a little bit of the brief details around this. You can find a lot of information around it as well, but the bottom line you need to keep in in your back of your mind as you're talking to folks uh that are especially within your organization is what is it affecting? If you're in the development space, one of the areas that you may have is a React server. You may be using the web applications called React. In a previous life, I had some of my development team would actually work with React. And so it is very pervasive throughout the web. Um it's not obviously pervasive as Log4j was, but it is nonetheless very substantial. I've heard numbers of around 60% of most web apps use React in their development world. So it uses React components 19.0.10.11 and.2.0. Uh it also will affect the next uh js JavaScript versions of 15.x and 16.x when using the app router. There's also some other frameworks that are involved in this, uh, such as Vite, Waku, and Parcel. There's a couple others that are tied to that as well. So the ultimate point is that this is a pretty significant risk to your organization if you do have that. Now, the reason it's such a big deal at this point is there is active uh exploitation that's occurring on it, and there's multiple groups that are going after it. Obviously, the Nexus from China, Iran, and North Korea are exploiting this vulnerability across many industries, which this one is kind of interesting. Uh, construction, entertainment, and also any sort of cloud native apps. So the cloud native apps is obviously if you if you developed it in your SaaS solution uh or you developed it with React, you probably are going to be attacked by these folks. Now, the reason that this is so incredibly challenging is because there's no authentication that's required. So basically, the attacker can exploit without any sort of credentials whatsoever. They have a single HTTP request. So just a single request to a vulnerable server will start the exploitation process. And basically, it can be just one malicious request to make that happen. There's a if you have default configuration that's set up, uh, it's vulnerable and there's no special setup specifically needed for these folks to do this, and it's highly reliable. So they've had multiple public proof of concepts and it works almost every time. So it's one of those aspects where you it's it's pretty easy for script kiddies who don't know what the crud they're doing to be able to go scan, find these React servers, and just start beating the dickens out of them. Um it affects even unused features that are out there. So they're even if you don't explicitly use the server functions, as long as they support React server components, RSC, then it could be effective. So to put it in perspective, if you don't even use React, but it is on your system, uh it could cause some effect within your uh your overall web server. So what should you do? You basically should upgrade immediately. If you have a if you have React within your environment, you should do this almost immediately. You shouldn't be waiting. I would let people know what you're doing and start the process. Even if it does force you to have an outage for a short period of time, uh it's worth doing it immediately. Do not delay. Uh, rotate your secrets. Obviously, if you have dependent on your API tokens you may have or any of those secrets that are tied to that server, you will want to rotate those. Uh check for compromise potentially, and then also deploy any WAF rules that you may have in place. Cloudflare and Microsoft already have these deployed, so you need to really truly think about it. There's over 111,000 different attacks uh from different IP addresses that are actually going. The Shadow Server Foundation currently is tracking over 111,000 IP addresses uh that are vulnerable to these attacks, with over 77,000 of them just in the United States alone. So that's a pretty substantial amount. And depending upon what you're doing uh with your organization, it could be very significant. Now, granted, if it's a website and there's nothing there, that's one thing, but highly likely that even if you have a website that you don't really do much with, there's probably a good chance that you might be using this React server for API integration. Maybe it's part of an API gateway, and it could cause all kinds of drama, right? Big time. If you're in the financial industry, this could cause you a lot of pain. So I would highly recommend you start looking at that immediately. Another thing that I concerned when I talked to some of my clients around this is the overall third party risk. So let's say, for example, you don't have any issues within your organization at all. You don't have React, but you use third parties that have uh the RSC components that are tied to them. You would I would highly recommend that you go out and reach out to these different third parties and just ask them, send them a link to this and say, are you guys vulnerable to this? Have you looked at it? Uh because if your data is going to them, you're going to be on the hook for managing this data, especially if you're in a regulated industry. Yeah, they're on the hook in some respects, but bottom line, it all stops with the buck stops with you. So I would recommend you go and contact all your third parties just to see if they have a web presence and if they are using the React system. So again, this is CVE 25 or 2025-55182. This is from Google's threat intelligence blog, Multiple Threat Actors Exploit React to Shell. All right, so big deal. I would go check it out. Go start looking at it immediately. I know, Merry Christmas. All right, so let's get into what we're gonna talk about today. So these are questions that are tied to the CISSP. Uh, this is over domain 6.5. You can find all of these questions at CISSP Cyber Training. I have a sp area specifically designed around deep dive questions. Uh, if you are looking for my free content, head on over there. There's a bunch of free information you can get. You just sign up for my my newsletter, and and actually don't really, it's not even a newsletter. It's more or less you're gonna be signing up to get free questions, you're gonna be signing up to get uh new updates, you're gonna be signing up to get anything that deals with my free content, any challenge or any updates that are gonna be to that, you will get all of those. Uh now, if you want to have more, if you plan on 2026 being the CISSP year, you're gonna get it done. I have a three, a four, and a five-month blueprint that are there and available to you. It walks you through the CISSP. I wish I would have had this. So this book is a challenge, but this will walk you through step by step by step on what you need to do to be prepared for the exam. If you do the steps, you will do well, you will pass the test. You will do very well on the exam if you follow the steps. And it will walk you through. You don't have to worry about second guessing. Did I study enough? Did I not study enough? Go to CISSP Cyber Training, look at my paid content that's available to you, and it's it's easy, really, truly it is. First question An organization is conducting a security assessment of its web application infrastructure. The security team wants to identify vulnerabilities that could be exploited by attackers, but wants to minimize the risk of disrupting production services. Which assessment approach would be most appropriate? Okay, so they want to do a security assessment of their web applications. The security team wants to identify vulnerabilities that could be exploited, but they want to minimize disrupting the production services. So what should you do? A black box penetration testing with full exploitation attempts. B credential vulnerability scanning with passive network monitoring. C, red team exercise with simulated advanced persistent threat scenarios, or D automated fuzzing of all API endpoints during peak business hours. Okay, so all of these can be appropriate depending on the situation. But which one is the most appropriate for this given situation? So you don't want to impact your services that are going on with your company, right? But you want to identify vulnerabilities and you're looking at web applications. So web applications are a big deal. Everything's front-facing. They most companies work go in and out of web applications, much like we talked about in today's podcast related to uh specifically around web exploits. So what do you do? Well, let's focus on the ones that aren't correct. Black box penetration testing with full exploitation attempts. Okay, so black box testing. We talked about black box where it's basically nobody knows you don't know anything going into it. You're just gonna go and start poking around. And then you're gonna exploit whatever you can find. Okay, so that has the risk of being very disruptive to your organization. Uh, especially if you're poking around and not really knowing what's going on. Uh there you you'll start slow, you'll start kind of working your way into it. But at the end of it, if you're in full exploitation mode, not just in uh gaining more information, uh, you could cause a serious disruption within your company. Automated fuzzing using all API endpoints during peak business hours. Okay, so an automated fuzzing of API endpoints is not a bad thing. Uh you can do that. However, if you're doing it during peak business hours, those API endpoints are probably interacting with other connections around the globe. And if they are, and if you're doing this during the day or during busy times, what's going to happen is you could potentially cause an interruption to those API calls. And if that's the case, you now are starting to basically disrupt what's going on. And you don't want to do that because that'll cost you money too. So automated fuzzing is not a correct answer. Red team exercise was simulated advanced persistent threats scenarios. Okay, again, comes down to the fact that red team scenarios are good, but if they're advanced persistent threat scenarios, you could cause an impact to your organization by doing so. So realistically, credential vulnerability scanning with passive network monitoring, I mean it's kind of in the word passive, uh, is an important part. So what does this give you? Well, if you you have the ability to do credential and uncredentialed scans. In a credential scan, if you're doing that, you are using credentials specifically within your organization to log in and do a full-up scan of these systems. So you're not just beating on the front door with a scanner, which can cause disruptions. The credentials, it's allowing you in and it's allowing you to scan with your environment. And so, therefore, by doing so and being in a passive network monitoring mode, you are not causing noise, which would then cause a disruption within your company. So the answer would be B. Next question. During a security audit, the auditor discovers that the organization performs quarterly vulnerability scans, but has not conducted a penetration test in over two years. Now, if you're in an regulated industry, you're gonna have to do that more often than every two years. The vulnerability scan consists consistently shows several medium severity findings that remain unpatched. What is the primary risk in this situation? What kind of risk does this situation present? So again, you you're you haven't done you've done quarterly scans, but you haven't done a pen test in over two years. So you got issues potentially, right? And you have medium severity findings that remain unpatched. So your scans showing that you got problems, and now you're going to do a pen test. Okay. A the organization may have false sense of security based on vulnerability scans that cannot identify exploitation for the impact of chain vulnerabilities. B, regulatory compliance requirements are not being met due to insufficient testing frequency. C, the vulnerability scanning tools are likely outdated and missing critical vulnerability signatures. Or D, staff members are not adequately trained on remediation procedures for identified vulnerabilities. Okay, so one of the things you want to do, the primary risk is you're saying you have two medium severity vulnerabilities. Now, if it's that's all you have, you're probably going, okay, I'm good, right? Because as we know, uh medium severity vulnerabilities are usually like 50-50, whether they're actually a vulnerability or not. And you may have times where you have uh multiple medium vulnerabilities. The reason I kind of focus on that is that, okay, that's all you have. That's pretty you should go after those. You should be trying to clean those up or at least close them. So what is the deal that's going on with it? So let's look at the what we feel could be some questions that are maybe not correct. Staff members are not adequately trained on a remediation process for identified vulnerabilities. So the primary risk is are they properly trained? Uh maybe, maybe not, but that wouldn't be considered a primary risk. It would be considered a risk, potentially, because all you have is medium vulnerabilities and you haven't done it in over two years. So maybe they're not trained correctly. Uh another question is the vulnerability or another answer is the vulnerability scans are likely outdated and missing critical vulnerability signatures. I don't know if that's really the risk, especially if you're doing quarterly scans. You're probably having up, especially if you've purchased a product. If the scans are probably correct, um you can kind of think that they are, but maybe they're not. Maybe they haven't been updated. Maybe you have to do a manual sync with these questions, or I should these questions, with these scanners to make sure that they have the right signatures. But that wouldn't be the primary risk situation in this specific area. Regulatory compliance requirements are not being met due to insufficient testing frequency. That is probably true. Uh, but that is not the primary risk situation, depending upon, again, depending upon your organization. If you're not a regulated organization, you don't have to do pen tests every two years. You don't do them every year. You don't have to do them if you don't want to. There's nothing saying you have to do those. But uh highly likely that this would be a regulated industry. So yes, their pen tests would be an important part. But the real answer, the correct, most most correct answer, not the real, the most correct answer is the organization may have a false sense of security because vulnerability scans cannot identify exploitivity for of or the impact of the chain vulnerabilities. So basically what they're trying to say there is that if you have a vulnerability that's a medium vulnerability, are there vulnerabilities that are tied to it? So if you don't go and fix it, right? So let's just say, for example, there's scanners coming back saying your medium vulnerabilities, you're still good, no worries. But if that medium is what we talked about earlier, maybe it's the real to or it's the react to shell type of vulnerability that if you have a medium risk and all of a sudden now it can propagate into something that's a higher risk, uh, you should always try to remediate as many vulnerabilities as you can. Um so again, that's what the pen test can find that information out for you, whereas just your vulnerability scanner won't just necessarily do that. All right, next question. A security manager must choose between conducting internal security assessments using staff members versus hiring external third party assessors. So a security manager must choose between conducting internal security assessments using staff members versus hiring external third party assessors. Under which scenario would the external assessment provide the most value? So again, you must choose between an internal security assessment using staff versus hiring external people, which one would be the most value? Okay, A, when testing newly deployed security controls that were implemented by the internal team, okay, so that would provide most value. When performing routine quarterly compliance checks required by industry regulations, okay, so this is when again we go back to this a minute. Under which scenario would an external assessment provide the most value? So you're focusing not on an internal, you're focusing on external. So the external when testing newly deployed security controls that were implemented by the internal team, when performing routine quarterly compliance scans required by industry industry regulations, when the organization needs to validate effectiveness of its incident detection and response capabilities against sophisticated attack techniques, or D when assessing password policy compliance across user accounts in Active Directory. Okay, so when you're dealing with an external assessment, they are they are can be very helpful. Uh they also can be very expensive. So if you're going to be have an expensive process going on within your company, you want to make sure that you use it to the most effective availability or management that you possibly can. So by doing that, you are going to focus on the things that have most value. So when testing a newly deployed security controls, that would not be the most value of it. You could you can do that internally. You don't have to spend a lot of money on somebody externally to tell you that. Now, if it's in result of a situation where you were found negligent and you maybe had a regulator came in and said you must fix this, that might be a situation where you'd have an external uh auditor or an assessment done of your security controls because they don't trust you to do it because you missed it the first time. The second question is when performing routine quarterly compliance scans required by industry industry regulations. So if you want to spend the money on having them do quarterly scans, you can, but that's not a good use of resources. It's also very expensive, and you're better off just buying the tool yourself. Just for what you pay for an external entity, uh, you can go ahead and purchase the tool yourself and do it all by your own. And and realistically, these all can be set up automatically. They can have automation based on them, so you don't need a huge team to do this. It can be done on us with a relatively small, inexperienced team. When assessing password policy compliance across user accounts in Active Directory, once again, if you're dealing with password policy comp compliance, you don't want to be a th have a third party doing this for you. You just you can do this yourself. So the real answer, the most correct answer, is when the organization needs to validate effectiveness of its incident detection and response capabilities against sophisticated attack techniques. Again, if you're gonna need somebody that is looking at your attack techniques or is basically gonna try to act like an emulate like the bad person and that your incident response actually works, this is where you'll spend the money and this is where it can be extremely valuable for you is when you're trying to just simulate the bad guy or girl that's coming after you. So, answer would be C. Next question an organization security testing program includes monthly automated vulnerability scans, annual penetration tests. And continuous security monitoring. Good. Despite these measures, the data breach occurred through a misconfigured API endpoint that was exposed for six months. I love APIs. I do. They're wonderful. What does the incident most likely indicate about the security assessment program? Okay, so you're doing stuff. You're doing lots of stuff. Pen tests, vulnerability scans, all these kinds of things, but you still had a problem. Houston, we have a problem. So what happened here? Well, A, let's go look at see what we got. A. Penetration testing scope was too narrow and did not include comprehensive API security testing. Possible. B, the vulnerability scanning tools lacked the necessary plugins to detect API misconfigurations. Probably not, but possible. The security monitoring solution was not properly tuned to detect unauthorized API access patterns. Okay. Or D, the organization failed to implement a comprehensive security testing strategy that includes all critical attack services and testing types. Okay, so the most likely. So we talked about B and C really. The vulnerability scanning tools lack the unnecessary plugins. That's possible, but it's not likely. It's pretty unlikely, right? Especially if you have an automated system in place and you've you've built it. Now, you maybe you built it and maybe it's all configured by you and you don't have it reaching out and pulling down the latest signatures. Okay, that's possible, but it's not the most valuable, or I should say the most likely. Uh security monitoring solution was not properly tuned to detect unauthorized API access patterns. Again, that kind of goes back to the question or answer B. It's very similar. Um, I don't see that as an issue. The penetration test scope was too narrow. It did not include the comprehensive API security testing. Okay, so pen testing on APIs, and they're they that is possible that they didn't they weren't part of the overall scope. However, you do have vulnerability scans that should have picked that up, and you have security monitoring that should have picked that up. So, what do you think it is? Well, obviously we've narrowed it down to the last one, which is D. The organization failed to implement a comprehensive security testing strategy that includes all critical attack services and types. So this happens a lot. You don't ask the right questions. And I don't mean that you don't know, but you just don't ask the right questions. Critical, when you're especially if security and uh IT are separate in many ways and they don't communicate well, uh, security may think they have all the everything covered, but IT may tell you come down and say, No, we really uh we have this on the side, or we have that on the side. Now, in today's world, most people know of API connections, but it is likely that you know you've got the VPN covered, I've got my external web front end covered, everything is good, my pen tests, they're focusing on all these aspects, but you forgot about APIs. And you didn't tell the pen testers about APIs because they were not very good pen testers and didn't ask the question. But it's all it comes down to is the last point is the organization failed to implement a comprehensive security testing strategy, which included critical attack services and testing types. Okay, the last question for today the last MELIN. A financial services company is planning its annual penetration test. The CISO wants to measure the effectiveness of both technical controls and security awareness training. Okay, so the CISO wants technical controls and security awareness training. The test should simulate the realistic attack scenario, but must not cause any disruption to customer-facing services. It's gotta look real, but don't bug anybody. While testing the approach, which testing approach would best meet these requirements? Okay, so he wants to have something done, doesn't want it to affect people. A gray box testing with read-only access credentials targeting internal systems during business hours. Okay, so again, we want to focus on he wants to measure effectiveness of both technical controls and security awareness training. Uh B, white box testing with full documentation of credentials, conducting a production mirror against a conducting against a mirrored environment. C, a black box testing with external perspective with rules of engagement prohibiting social engineering. Or D, a purple team exercise combining red team attacks with blue team real-time collaboration using production systems with careful scoping. Okay, so the CISO wants effective effective both technical controls and security awareness training. And he wants to, or I say he, could be she, uh, wants the test should simulate a realistic attack scenario, but not must not cause any disruption. Okay, so realized real life tech attack scenario, you've got to kind of start throwing stuff out, right? The white box, uh yeah, that doesn't really tell you much about what's going on, right? It gives you the documentation of stuff, and it's it's but it's more of a hands-on, everybody's talking together, right? Gray box with only read-to-only access, again, they're targeting only internal systems during business hours, and it's read-only. So that's not like real life scenarios. Black box, okay, that would be more of a real-life scenario, right, from an external perspective, uh, but they have rules of engagement prohibiting social engineering. So that one could be the closer one, sort of, uh, but which one should you really focus on? Well, when you're dealing with an attacker, you're gonna have both when I was doing this, you have the red teams, and then you have a training team as well, your blue teams that are in place, and they're gonna be able to create the training for your people. And so you really want to focus on your red and your purple teams, and you want to do real-time collaboration using these various systems. The big thing around this is though, is you want to avoid the the scoping is an important part so that you shouldn't disrupt customer-facing services. So, if you're gonna be doing a red team against an organization, you would focus on things that are not customer facing, maybe during specific times and different hours. And then when the customer goes away because maybe they're all asleep, that's when you would do testing against customer facing areas. So the ultimate goal is the purple team will test the controls and the human factors, which is an important part of the overall request that he or she had in this scenario. So red and red and blue teams are an important part, so therefore it is a purple team. If you haven't figured it out yet, the purple team is the blending of red and blue. So the answer would be D. Okay, so that's all I have for you today. I hope you had a wonderful Christmas. I hope you have a great Christmas if you're listening to this after Christmas, and I hope and pray that you have a wonderful 2026. It keeps you healthy and happy. The Lord takes care of you because you know what? It's life's too short. And you need to enjoy your life, you need to enjoy time with your family. So enjoy time with your families today on Christmas. Do not listen to this podcast on Christmas. Okay. I'm gonna watch the numbers. I'm gonna watch them and just see. You should not be watch listening to this podcast on Christmas. Enjoy your family. Or if you don't have family, just enjoy relaxing and just taking in what God gives you. And enjoy that too. All right, have a wonderful day, and we'll catch you on the flip side. See ya. Thanks so much for joining me today on my podcast. If you like what you heard, please leave a review on iTunes. I would greatly appreciate your feedback. Also, check out my videos that are on YouTube, and just head to my channel at CISSP Cyber Training, and you will find a plethora or a conocopia of content to help you pass the CISSP exam the first time. Lastly, head to CISSP Cyber Training and sign up for 363 CISSP questions to help you in your CISSP journey. Thanks again for listening.