Pwn2Own Tokyo Day one: NETGEAR Router, WD NAS Device hacked

Pierluigi Paganini November 06, 2020

Pwn2Own Tokyo 2020 hacking competition is started, bug bounty hunters already hacked a NETGEAR router and a Western Digital NAS devices.

The popular Pwn2Own Tokyo hacking competition is started and due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the competition has been arranged as a virtual event.

Pwn2Own Tokyo 2020

The Pwn2Own Tokyo is actually coordinated by Zero Day Initiative from Toronto, Canada, and white hat hackers taking part in the competition have to demonstrate their ability to find and exploit vulnerabilities in a broad range of devices.

On the day one of the competition, bug bounty hunters have successfully hacked a vulnerability in the NETGEAR Nighthawk R7800 router. The participants were the Team Black Coffee, Team Flashback, and teams from cybersecurity firms Starlabs and Trapa Security, and the Team Flashback earned $20,000 for a remote code execution exploit that resulting from the chaining of two bugs in the WAN interface.

“The team combined an auth bypass bug and a command injection bug to gain root on the system. They win $20,000 and 2 points towards Master of Pwn.” reads the post on the official site of the Pwn2Own Tokyo 2020.

The Trapa team successfully chained a pair of bugs to gain code execution on the LAN interface of the router, the experts earned $5,000 and 1 point towards Master of Pwn.

The STARLabs team earned the same amount after using a command injection flaw to take control of the device.

The Western Digital My Cloud Pro series PR4100 NSA device was targeted by The Trapa Security team also earned $20,000 for a working exploit for the Western Digital My Cloud Pro series PR4100 NSA device.

The exploit code chained an authentication bypass bug and a command injection vulnerability to gain root on the device.

The 84c0 Team obtained partial success demonstrating a remote code execution exploit that leveraged a previously known issue.

In the afternoon, the Viettel Cyber Security team targeted a Samsung smart TV, the Samsung Q60T television, obtaining partial success due to the use of a known vulnerability.

“The Viettel Team was able to get a reverse shell on a fully patched Samsung TV, but it was done using a known bug. This counts as a partial win, but it does net them 1 point towards Master of Pwn.” continues the post.

Day two of Pwn2Own Tokyo already started, the participants will attempt to hack TP-Link and NETGEAR routers, WD and Synology NAS devices, and Sony and Samsung TVs.

At the time of writing, Team Flashback won another $20,000 and 2 more Master of Pwn points targeting the WAN interface on the TP-Link AC1750 Smart WiFi router.

In 2019, last year’s Pwn2Own Tokyo, participants earned a total of $315,000 for disclosing 18 different flaws.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Pwn2Own Tokyo)

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