Vulnerabilities > CVE-2018-12590 - Use of Externally-Controlled Format String vulnerability in UI Edgeswitch Firmware 1.7.3
Attack vector
NETWORK Attack complexity
LOW Privileges required
SINGLE Confidentiality impact
COMPLETE Integrity impact
COMPLETE Availability impact
COMPLETE Summary
Ubiquiti Networks EdgeSwitch version 1.7.3 and prior suffer from an externally controlled format-string vulnerability due to lack of protection on the admin CLI, leading to code execution and privilege escalation greater than administrators themselves are allowed. An attacker with access to an admin account could escape the restricted CLI and execute arbitrary code.
Vulnerable Configurations
| Part | Description | Count |
|---|---|---|
| OS | 1 | |
| Hardware | 1 |
Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE)
Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC)
- Format String Injection An attacker includes formatting characters in a string input field on the target application. Most applications assume that users will provide static text and may respond unpredictably to the presence of formatting character. For example, in certain functions of the C programming languages such as printf, the formatting character %s will print the contents of a memory location expecting this location to identify a string and the formatting character %n prints the number of DWORD written in the memory. An attacker can use this to read or write to memory locations or files, or simply to manipulate the value of the resulting text in unexpected ways. Reading or writing memory may result in program crashes and writing memory could result in the execution of arbitrary code if the attacker can write to the program stack.
- String Format Overflow in syslog() This attack targets the format string vulnerabilities in the syslog() function. An attacker would typically inject malicious input in the format string parameter of the syslog function. This is a common problem, and many public vulnerabilities and associated exploits have been posted.