CVE-2026-24516
DigitalOcean Droplet Agent Command Injection Vulnerability
Description
A command injection vulnerability exists in DigitalOcean Droplet Agent through 1.3.2. The troubleshooting actioner component (internal/troubleshooting/actioner/actioner.go) processes metadata from the metadata service endpoint and executes commands specified in the TroubleshootingAgent.Requesting array without adequate input validation. While the code validates that artifacts exist in the validInvestigationArtifacts map, it fails to sanitize the actual command content after the "command:" prefix. This allows an attacker who can control metadata responses to inject and execute arbitrary OS commands with root privileges. The attack is triggered by sending a TCP packet with specific sequence numbers to the SSH port, which causes the agent to fetch metadata from http://169.254.169.254/metadata/v1.json. The vulnerability affects the command execution flow in internal/troubleshooting/actioner/actioner.go (insufficient validation), internal/troubleshooting/command/exec.go (direct exec.CommandContext call), and internal/troubleshooting/command/command.go (command parsing without sanitization). This can lead to complete system compromise, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, and potential lateral movement across cloud infrastructure.
INFO
Published Date :
March 23, 2026, 5:16 p.m.
Last Modified :
March 23, 2026, 5:16 p.m.
Remotely Exploit :
No
Source :
[email protected]
Affected Products
The following products are affected by CVE-2026-24516
vulnerability.
Even if cvefeed.io is aware of the exact versions of the
products
that
are
affected, the information is not represented in the table below.
No affected product recoded yet
Solution
- Update DigitalOcean Droplet Agent to version 1.3.3 or later.
- Ensure metadata responses are validated before execution.
- Review command execution flows for sanitization.
References to Advisories, Solutions, and Tools
Here, you will find a curated list of external links that provide in-depth
information, practical solutions, and valuable tools related to
CVE-2026-24516.
CWE - Common Weakness Enumeration
While CVE identifies
specific instances of vulnerabilities, CWE categorizes the common flaws or
weaknesses that can lead to vulnerabilities. CVE-2026-24516 is
associated with the following CWEs:
Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC)
Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification
(CAPEC)
stores attack patterns, which are descriptions of the common attributes and
approaches employed by adversaries to exploit the CVE-2026-24516
weaknesses.
We scan GitHub repositories to detect new proof-of-concept exploits. Following list is a collection of public exploits and proof-of-concepts, which have been published on GitHub (sorted by the most recently updated).
Results are limited to the first 15 repositories due to potential performance issues.
The following list is the news that have been mention
CVE-2026-24516 vulnerability anywhere in the article.
The following table lists the changes that have been made to the
CVE-2026-24516 vulnerability over time.
Vulnerability history details can be useful for understanding the evolution of a vulnerability, and for identifying the most recent changes that may impact the vulnerability's severity, exploitability, or other characteristics.
-
New CVE Received by [email protected]
Mar. 23, 2026
Action Type Old Value New Value Added Description A command injection vulnerability exists in DigitalOcean Droplet Agent through 1.3.2. The troubleshooting actioner component (internal/troubleshooting/actioner/actioner.go) processes metadata from the metadata service endpoint and executes commands specified in the TroubleshootingAgent.Requesting array without adequate input validation. While the code validates that artifacts exist in the validInvestigationArtifacts map, it fails to sanitize the actual command content after the "command:" prefix. This allows an attacker who can control metadata responses to inject and execute arbitrary OS commands with root privileges. The attack is triggered by sending a TCP packet with specific sequence numbers to the SSH port, which causes the agent to fetch metadata from http://169.254.169.254/metadata/v1.json. The vulnerability affects the command execution flow in internal/troubleshooting/actioner/actioner.go (insufficient validation), internal/troubleshooting/command/exec.go (direct exec.CommandContext call), and internal/troubleshooting/command/command.go (command parsing without sanitization). This can lead to complete system compromise, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, and potential lateral movement across cloud infrastructure. Added Reference https://github.com/digitalocean/droplet-agent/blob/main/internal/troubleshooting/actioner/actioner.go Added Reference https://github.com/digitalocean/droplet-agent/blob/main/internal/troubleshooting/command/command.go Added Reference https://github.com/digitalocean/droplet-agent/blob/main/internal/troubleshooting/command/exec.go Added Reference https://github.com/poxsky/CVE-2026-24516-DigitalOcean-RCE