this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2024
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250
TP-Link Gaming Router Vulnerability Exposes Users to Remote Code Attacks (thehackernews.com)
submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
47 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

The Article

A maximum-severity security flaw has been disclosed in the TP-Link Archer C5400X gaming router that could lead to remote code execution on susceptible devices by sending specially crafted requests. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-5035, carries a CVSS score of 10.0. It impacts all versions of the router firmware including and prior to 1_1.1.6. It has been patched in version 1_1.1.7 released on May 24, 2024.

"By successfully exploiting this flaw, remote unauthenticated attackers can gain arbitrary command execution on the device with elevated privileges," German cybersecurity firm ONEKEY said in a report published Monday. The issue is rooted in a binary related to radio frequency testing "rftest" that's launched on startup and exposes a network listener on TCP ports 8888, 8889, and 8890, thus allowing a remote unauthenticated attacker to achieve code execution. While the network service is designed to only accept commands that start with "wl" or "nvram get," ONEKEY found that the restriction could be trivially bypassed by injecting a command after shell meta-characters like ; , & , or, | (e.g., "wl;id;"). Cybersecurity

TP-Link's implemented fix in version 1_1.1.7 Build 20240510 addresses the vulnerability by discarding any command containing these special characters. "It seems the need to provide a wireless device configuration API at TP-Link had to be answered either fast or cheap, which ended up with them exposing a supposedly limited shell over the network that clients within the router could use as a way to configure wireless devices," ONEKEY said.

The disclosure arrives weeks after security flaws were also revealed by the company in Delta Electronics DVW W02W2 industrial Ethernet routers (CVE-2024-3871) and Ligowave networking gear (CVE-2024-4999) that could allow remote attackers to gain remote command execution with elevated privileges. It's worth noting that these flaws remain unpatched due to the devices being no longer actively maintained, making it imperative that users take adequate steps to limit exposure of administration interfaces to reduce the potential for exploitation.

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[–] [email protected] 52 points 5 months ago (3 children)

People only buying this for the aesthetic in the first place and it’s pathetic.

Just buy a functional router and a Lego kit like a real adult ffs.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago

No one diss the gaming demon summoning circle! Sacrifice him!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago

They also buy it because it is marketed for gamers telling them it gives them an advantage. Which it will if you compare it to a shitty router from 2008. Nowadays any mainstream router will do fine as long as you are within its range. If you really care as a gamer use a wired connection.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I look at this thing wondering why the hell it has 9 antennas?? Or is that really just for looks? Which only raises more questions really…

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Supposably for beam forming 🤷🏼‍♂️

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

I wanna see Scotty installing these on the Enterprise.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

While the network service is designed to only accept commands that start with “wl” or “nvram get,” ONEKEY found that the restriction could be trivially bypassed by injecting a command after shell meta-characters like ; , & , or, | (e.g., “wl;id;”).

Whenever I feel like I'm a terrible programmer, I remind myself that there are vast amounts of confident coders out there being paid for code with idiotic mistakes like this and they have no intention of getting any better at it

[–] freeman 7 points 5 months ago

Frankly " injecting a command after shell-metacharacters" makes it sound much more mystical and arcane than"just use the normal one liner syntax to run 2 commands"

[–] ThrowawayPermanente 39 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Don't ever buy anything marketed specifically to gamers

[–] [email protected] 21 points 5 months ago (1 children)

As a "gamer" and game developer, this is sound advice.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago

Yep.

At best, you're paying extra for RGB lighting.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

But what about video games :(

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Compile it yourself

Donate to developers

[–] [email protected] 31 points 5 months ago (1 children)

On the plus side, this particular router will work fine as a stand for a fondue pot.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

Utterly hilarious designs in the router world.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago (1 children)

There aren't enough RGBs on this thing for me to even consider it "gaming." Step it up, TP Link!

[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, what's "gaming" about this thing? Does it hate women and minorities?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, what's "gaming" about this thing?

Red accents of course.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

And spikes

[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Pro tip: Avoid routers with proprietary firmware.

OpenWrt is a nice alternative that can be installed on many devices.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Leaving consumer routers behind and going the pfSense route is among the best decisions I've ever made. Highly recommended for anyone who isn't afraid to learn some network stuff.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (3 children)

I went with "cheap mikrotik router + cheap used enterprise APs (3x Aruba 325)," and I've been pretty happy.

What hardware you running for pfSense?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Same idea here. Fortigate 30f (since I can dl updates manually), Fortiswitch 124e (same) and 2 FortiAP 421E's (ditto). All but ap's I could grab from employers "ditch bin".

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You can run pf sense on fortinet stuff?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

No. It's proprietary custom SoC that runs heavily modified unix on ARM.
But software is solid and patches come out lightning fast.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Oh. The fortigate wasn’t one of the ones that had to be replaced because of a cvss 10 was it?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yes and no. That model still gets updates. One I have has no active support licence, so it has to be updated manually.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 5 months ago

I thought they had a batch of fortigate hardware whose baked in keys got leaked and their response was to recommend that affected devices be removed from service, no update fix, no patch, just “stop using them, we can’t fix it”.

Sorry for not having more information on hand, I’m on mobile at the moment and the nist database is tough to navigate with fat thumbs.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

I'm running a Pentium G4560 and 8Gb of RAM in a dual NIC Shuttle case. The specs were a total gamble but I have a lot of headroom currently so if I need to do more advanced stuff in the future I can.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

My old PC.

Its on proxmox but I've got an i7 8600k 18tb hard drive for frigate / nas, rtx2080ti because where else am I going to put it. 32gb ram. 1000 watt PSU.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Setting up a pfsense router / firewall virtualized in proxmox on my server PC with separate vlans for my iot devices and guest WiFi was tedious, time consuming, challenging, educational, and ultimately worth it. I'm not invincible buy at least I have fucking viability into what's going on in my fucking home network.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Do you have any recommendations for someone looking to do this? Guides you found useful, videos or YouTube channels, software packages, pitfalls to avoid? I've been thinking of doing something like this for years and lately feel like I need to to get a handle on what's really going on in my network

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Dude I wish. I'd love to be able to point you in the right direction but getting this all working for me was just the product.of determination and posts / videos from all over the place.

I can tell you that adding proxmox to the equation made things way more complicated. And that vlans are not intuitive.

My advice would be to just kind of go for it. I ended up needing a smart switch, a mul5i nic pace card, a regular switch, and two access points (you could get a vlan aware access point but I couldn't find anything that made sense price wise).

The whole thing took days to set up. I frequently didn't know why things weren't working. It sucked.

You can pm me if you get stuck and I can try to give you a hand buy the frustrating truth I learned about the process was that I was kind of on my own since every set up is kind of unique based on your hardware.

I'm glad its done but doing it frankly sucked..

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Thanks for the reply!

I'll probably just start messing around with things and see where they go, worst case I'll spend some time and learn some things

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Pm me if you feel like ripping your hair out and putting a whole in the wall with your face. Which I often did. I can try and help. Though there are probably better options

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I'm doing this myself very soon, honestly looking forwards to it so much 😁

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I remember that anticipation fondly. 😁 I watched a bunch of videos on pfSense (Lawrence Systems on YT is great, but you probably know that already) and read a bunch of things, planning out what I wanted to do before I made the leap, and it was great!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Yeah LS is truly a great resource for so many topics. Thanks for the suggestion! 🙌

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago (2 children)

lmao just bought one of these last week! Glad the fix is already out.

And no, I didn't buy it for its looks xD It's actually a decent router that does additional things I needed.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Inside me there are two wolves, one that thinks "gamer" stuff is stupid, and another that thinks this router looks sweet as hell.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Just have to gibbet some dolls on those spikes

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

I have one that looks just like this. Always worked pretty well for me.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Looks like a Daedric artifact of some sort.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Or like a Split trading station from X4

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

Hate the look of all these home routers.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

Looks like a dead spider

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

I don't see how this is possible. The router has EIGHT aerodynamic antennas.

Maybe they should have added one or two more..