A researcher has made available exploits for a couple of serious vulnerabilities in Netgear’s ProSAFE NMS300 network management system for which the vendor has yet to release patches.
Netgear’s ProSAFE NMS300 Management System is designed to make it easy for administrators to monitor and manage their networks from a web-based interface.
Agile Information Security researcher Pedro Ribeiro discovered that the product is plagued by a vulnerability that allows a remote, unauthenticated attacker to upload an arbitrary file to the system. The uploaded file is available in the server’s root directory at http://<IP>:8080/null<filename> and it gets executed with SYSTEM privileges.
This remote code execution vulnerability has been assigned the identifier CVE-2016-1524 and a CVSS score of 8.3. The security hole can be exploited by sending a specially crafted POST request to one of two Java servlets found in default NMS300 installations.
Another flaw identified by Ribeiro is a directory traversal (CVE-2016-1525) that allows an authenticated attacker to download any file from the system. The vulnerability can be exploited by loading an arbitrary file from the server host to a predictable location in the web service from where it can be downloaded, the CERT Coordination Center at Carnegie Mellon University said in an advisory.
Ribeiro reported his findings to Netgear via CERT/CC in early December, but the vendor has yet to release a patch. The expert has published Metasploit modules for both vulnerabilities.
Until a patch becomes available, users are advised to ensure that the web management interface of NMS300 is not exposed to the Internet or untrusted networks.
SecurityWeek has asked Netgear about its plans to address the vulnerabilities and will update this article if the company responds.
This is not the first time a researcher has found vulnerabilities in these types of Netgear products. In June 2015, the company released a firmware update to patch an authentication bypass/privilege escalation issue in its WMS5316 ProSafe 16AP Wireless Management System. The flaw had been reported to the company in April 2015.
Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.
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