Experts Discover Major Vulnerability in Netgear Routers

By Lynn Palec, | December 11, 2016

Experts have found security loopholes in two Neatgear routers. (YouTube)

Experts have found security loopholes in two Neatgear routers. (YouTube)

Security experts have disclosed a major vulnerability affecting two Netgear routers, the R6400 and R7000 models. Experts say that the vulnerability can allow hackers to completely take over the routers.

According to Computer World, the vulnerabilities were disclosed on Dec. 9. Netgear is yet to respond. The advisory was posted in the Carnegie Mellon University's public vulnerability database.

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Details about the flaw are sparse. Some security experts are not even sure if the flaw can be exploited remotely. Some experts said that if the flaw can be exploited locally, using a non-standard IP address for the router should be enough to offer a bit of defense. So far, only one vulnerability test is available, and it uses a Telnet daemon initiated on a non-standard port.

Experts say that the vulnerability can be exploited by command injection. Once hackers can penetrate the vulnerable routers, they can run commands with root privileges on it. The command to initiate the hack, which comes in a form of a URL, has been disclosed publicly, which means that almost anyone can carry out the attacks.

Since the command is just a URL, an attacker can simply trick the unsuspecting user to visit the website which contains the malicious code in order to initiate the hack. Once infected, hackers can essentially launch commands to the router's IP address which will allow them to open up some ports.

Security experts have advised owners of the vulnerable routers to cease using the devices until a proper fix is rolled out and that their routers are updated, according to ZDNet. As of this writing, it is not clear as to how many routers are affected by the vulnerability.

Malicious hackers are increasingly targeting routers. Last week, almost half of Germany experienced Internet outage when hackers launched a DDoS attack using hijacked routers around the globe.

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