### **SAP Autopsy: Postmortem of a Fallen Fortress**

Picture the coroner’s table.

The patient: SAP NetWeaver, global ERP titan.

Time of death: August 15, 2025, when exploit code for CVE-2025-31324 and CVE-2025-42999 hit the public.

The autopsy findings:

**Cause of Death:**

* **Massive hemorrhage of trust.** An unauthenticated RCE in Visual Composer exposed `/developmentserver/metadatauploader` to anyone with an HTTP client.

* **Secondary infection:** insecure deserialization gadget chains made the exploit adaptable across NetWeaver versions.

* **Complications:** months of undetected exploitation and follow-on attacks, living off the land without leaving traditional malware artifacts.

**Notable Injuries:**

* `adm` privileges granted on entry. Every vital organ—finance, supply chain, HR—wide open.

* Webshell implants in some cases, but more alarming: **fileless compromise**. Attackers hijacked SAP’s own processes; no binaries to catch, nothing for AV to scan.

* **Persistent internal bleeding:** exploitation continued even after initial patches; living-off-the-land behavior meant old infections remained active.

**Underlying Conditions:**

* **Brittle immune system:** SAP has no native runtime integrity checks. It can’t self-attest whether it’s behaving correctly once compromised.

* **Overreliance on perimeter trust:** Security Notes and audits assume a “fortress” model. Once the gates fell, there was no second line of defense.

* **Systemic interdependence:** SAP doesn’t run in isolation. It’s connected to countless other systems. When it got sick, it became a pivot point for deeper network compromise.

**Manner of Death:**

* **Homicide by negligence.** The exploit weaponized known weaknesses in a high-value target, and defenders lagged behind. But the real killer was a trust model that assumed “patched = safe” and “logs = integrity.”

**Lessons from the Autopsy:**

1. LOTL (Living off the Land) isn’t unique to SAP. But on SAP, it’s lethal. Because the “land” includes high-privilege ERP processes with direct control over critical business operations.

2. Patching and IOC scans aren’t enough when the attacker can blend seamlessly with legitimate workflows.

3. **Verification must replace trust.** Continuous behavior-driven checks are the only way to detect when systems act outside their defined purpose.

SAP isn’t the only patient at risk. Every monolithic ERP with no runtime attestation shares these conditions.

**The question is not if the next fortress will fall. It’s whether you’ll still be trusting…or verifying.**

#SAPocalypse #Postmortem #VerifyDontTrust #DamageBDD #BehaviorVerification #LOTL