Pre-Authentication Admin Bypass and Remote Code Execution in Nutanix Prism Gateway inside AOS

An unauthenticated remote attacker can bypass authentication and gain full access to administrative API endpoints in Nutanix Prism Element by including a crafted internal management HTTP header. The vulnerability is caused by a misconfiguration in the application's authentication filters.

Consequently, the server responds with a Set-Cookie header containing a valid JSESSIONID. This session cookie decodes to a JSON Web Token (JWT) granting maximum cluster administrative privileges. Successful exploitation allows the attacker to execute root-level commands on all Controller VMs (CVMs) in the cluster, leading to complete cluster destruction and unauthorized access to VM memory and virtual disks.