Perforce is source control software used in games, entertainment, and a few engineering sectors. It's particularly useful when large binary assets need to be stored alongside source code. It handles binary assets much better than Git, IMO. However, its one weakness is its terrible security defaults. You will die a bit inside when you see the out-of-the-box behaviour: "Don't have an account? Let me make one for you!" and "Oh, you didn't know by default there is a hidden, read-only 'remote' user that allows read access to everything? Oops!"

I scanned 6,122 public Perforce servers last year. 72% were exposing source code, 21% had passwordless accounts, and 4% had unprotected superusers (which allow RCE). The vendor patched the largest issue, but a significant portion are still vulnerable.

Full write-up and methodology: [https://morganrobertson.net/p4wned/](https://morganrobertson.net/p4wned/)

Tools repo, including Nuclei templates to scan your infra: [https://github.com/flyingllama87/p4wned](https://github.com/flyingllama87/p4wned)

SecurityWeek: [https://www.securityweek.com/unsecured-perforce-servers-expo...](https://www.securityweek.com/unsecured-perforce-servers-expo...)

*Hardening is a pain, but here it is summed up:* ``` p4 configure set security=4 # disables the built-in 'remote' user + strong auth p4 configure set dm.user.noautocreate=2 # kills auto-signup p4 configure set dm.user.setinitialpasswd=0 # users cannot self-set first password p4 configure set dm.user.resetpassword=1 # force password reset flow p4 configure set dm.info.hide=1 # hide server license, internal IP, root path p4 configure set run.users.authorize=1 # user listing requires auth p4 configure set dm.user.hideinvalid=1 # no hints on bad login p4 configure set dm.keys.hide=2 # hide stored key/value pairs from non-admins p4 configure set server.rolechecks=1 # prevent P4AUTH misuse ```

Happy to answer any questions on the research!

ugh - I really mangled that haha. Plain text only? I respect it. Here it is again, but properly formatted.

===

Perforce is source control software used in games, entertainment, and a few engineering sectors. It's particularly useful when large binary assets need to be stored alongside source code. It handles binary assets much better than Git, IMO. However, its one weakness is its terrible security defaults. You will die a bit inside when you see the out-of-the-box behaviour: "Don't have an account? Let me make one for you!" and "Oh, you didn't know by default there is a hidden, read-only 'remote' user that allows read access to everything? Oops!"

I scanned 6,122 public Perforce servers last year. 72% were exposing source code, 21% had passwordless accounts, and 4% had unprotected superusers (which allow RCE). The vendor patched the largest issue, but a significant portion are still vulnerable.

Full write-up and methodology: https://morganrobertson.net/p4wned/

Tools repo, including Nuclei templates to scan your infra: https://github.com/flyingllama87/p4wned

SecurityWeek: https://www.securityweek.com/unsecured-perforce-servers-expo...

*Hardening is a pain, but here it is summed up:*

p4 configure set security=4 # disables the built-in 'remote' user + strong auth p4 configure set dm.user.noautocreate=2 # kills auto-signup p4 configure set dm.user.setinitialpasswd=0 # users cannot self-set first password p4 configure set dm.user.resetpassword=1 # force password reset flow p4 configure set dm.info.hide=1 # hide server license, internal IP, root path p4 configure set run.users.authorize=1 # user listing requires auth p4 configure set dm.user.hideinvalid=1 # no hints on bad login p4 configure set dm.keys.hide=2 # hide stored key/value pairs from non-admins p4 configure set server.rolechecks=1 # prevent P4AUTH misuse

Happy to answer any questions on the research!