Actively exploited · Published Jan 17, 2017 · Assigned by mitre
CVE-2017-5521
High 8.1 Exploited
In plain English
A high-severity security flaw in Multiple Devices from NETGEAR. Attackers are actively exploiting it in the wild (listed by CISA on September 8, 2022). The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 89.4% (higher than 99.8% of all known vulnerabilities). Ready-made attack tooling exists: Metasploit, Nuclei. Apply updates per vendor instructions. If the affected device has since entered end-of-life, it should be disconnected if still in use.
CISA guidance
Apply updates per vendor instructions. If the affected device has since entered end-of-life, it should be disconnected if still in use.
Federal agencies must remediate by Sep 29, 2022.
Official description
An issue was discovered on NETGEAR R8500, R8300, R7000, R6400, R7300, R7100LG, R6300v2, WNDR3400v3, WNR3500Lv2, R6250, R6700, R6900, and R8000 devices. They are prone to password disclosure via simple crafted requests to the web management server. The bug is exploitable remotely if the remote management option is set, and can also be exploited given access to the router over LAN or WLAN. When trying to access the web panel, a user is asked to authenticate; if the authentication is canceled and password recovery is not enabled, the user is redirected to a page that exposes a password recovery token. If a user supplies the correct token to the page /passwordrecovered.cgi?id=TOKEN (and password recovery is not enabled), they will receive the admin password for the router. If password recovery is set the exploit will fail, as it will ask the user for the recovery questions that were previously set when enabling that feature. This is persistent (even after disabling the recovery option, the exploit will fail) because the router will ask for the security questions.
Affected products (as reported)
References
- 41205 exploit, x_refsource_EXPLOIT-DB
- http://kb.netgear.com/30632/Web-GUI-Password-Recovery-and-Exposure-Security-Vulnerability x_refsource_CONFIRM
- 95457 vdb-entry, x_refsource_BID
- https://www.cisa.gov/known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog?field_cve=CVE-2017-5521 government-resource