MeshCentral Vulnerability Exploitation: How LLMs Can Chain XSS to RCE in Open-Source RMM Tools
By
Kev Breen
Hand-rolled, kettle-boiled, baked to perfection. Worth every minute at the bakery.
Summary
The article discusses a security researcher's experiment to prove that Large Language Models (LLMs) — not just frontier models like Mythos and Fable, but also pre-existing local models — can effectively find and exploit vulnerabilities in open-source software. The researcher targets MeshCentral, an open-source remote monitoring and management (RMM) tool, aiming to demonstrate that with proper framing, any capable LLM can chain an XSS vulnerability into a full Remote Code Execution (RCE) exploit. The piece serves as both a technical walkthrough and a proof-of-concept showing that LLM-powered vulnerability discovery is already a present reality, not just a future possibility.
Key quotes
· 3 pulledI really like exploiting XSS in RMM tools. There are a range of skills required and an attack surface that covers a number of elements the web app that's rendering the UI, the client that's shipping information and then the network protocol that's used.
Given the right framing, any model pre-Mythos and Fable can achieve the same outcomes.
I would grab an open-source project, something that has the potential for wide impact at an organisation that uses it. Then I would put both frontier models and local models against it and see what it could find.
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