IT security services and consulting company SEC Consult has disclosed the details of several apparently unpatched vulnerabilities affecting Linksys E-Series wireless home routers.
The flaws were reported to Linksys in July and while the vendor was initially responsive, it stopped answering SEC Consult’s emails in early September, when it said that patches for some of the vulnerable devices had been on their way to QA.
SecurityWeek has reached out to Belkin, the company that owns the Linksys brand, regarding the availability of patches, and will update this article if the company provides any information.
According to an advisory published by SEC Consult, Linksys E900, E1200 and E8400 AC2400 routers have been confirmed to be vulnerable by the vendor. The security firm conducted its tests on an E2500 device, but it believes E900-ME, E1500, E3200, E4300 and WRT54G2 routers are affected as well.
Researchers have discovered a total of five types of vulnerabilities and proof-of-concept (PoC) examples have been made available for each of them. The flaws include denial-of-service (DoS), HTTP header injection, improper session protection, cross-site request forgery (CSRF), and cross-site scripting (XSS) issues.
SEC Consult’s analysis revealed that various combinations of these vulnerabilities can be exploited to cause a permanent DoS condition, redirect users to malicious websites, change a device’s configuration, and execute malicious code in the context of the victim’s browsing session.
The security firm has advised users to keep an eye out for the patches from Linksys and apply them as soon as they become available. In the meantime, users can prevent potential attacks by restricting network access to the device.
This is not the first time researchers have disclosed vulnerabilities in Linksys routers before patches were made available. Back in April, IOActive said it had found a total of 10 flaws in devices that support the Smart Wi-Fi feature. While patches had not been released, Linksys did provide some mitigation advice.
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