Pierluigi Paganini
December 10, 2016
IoT devices are privileged targets for threat actors, the Mirai botnet is the demonstration of the effects of a massive attack powered with smart objects, including routers, CCTV and DVRs.
Now the security experts are warning of serious security issues in two Netgear routers. The Netgear R7000 and R6400 routers are affected by a critical vulnerability that could be exploited by remote attackers to run malicious code with root privileges.
Unfortunately, current and latest versions of the Netgear R7000 and R6400 routers running current and latest versions of the firmware are vulnerable to arbitrary command injection attacks.
At the time I was writing we cannot exclude that also other models may be vulnerable.
The Carnegie Mellon University CERT published a security advisory (Vulnerability Note VU#582384) to warn of multiple Netgear routers are vulnerable to arbitrary command injection.
The exploitation of the flaw is quite simple, attackers just need victims info into visiting a website that contains specially crafted malicious code to trigger the vulnerability.
“Netgear R7000, firmware version 1.0.7.2_1.1.93 and possibly earlier, and R6400, firmware version 1.0.1.6_1.0.4 and possibly earlier, contain an arbitrary command injection vulnerability.” reads the advisory issued by the CERT/CC.”By convincing a user to visit a specially crafted web site, a remote attacker may execute arbitrary commands with root privileges on affected routers. A LAN-based attacker may do the same by issuing a direct request.
The advisory states that in order to exploit the flaw, the victim could visit a website like:
http://<router_IP>/cgi-bin/;COMMAND
then the malicious commands would execute automatically with root privileges.
The code exploit for this vulnerability has been publicly released.
At the time I was writing there is no available fix for the issue neither a workaround, for this reason, the CERT strongly recommended Netgear users to “consider discontinuing use” of vulnerable Netgear R7000 and R6400 routers, until a patch is released by the company.
“Exploiting this vulnerability is trivial. Users who have the option of doing so should strongly consider discontinuing use of affected devices until a fix is made available.” states the CERT.
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(Security Affairs – Netgear R7000 and R6400 routers, IoT)
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