Vulnerabilities > CVE-2019-12511 - OS Command Injection vulnerability in Netgear Nighthawk X10-R9000 Firmware 1.0.4.24
Summary
In NETGEAR Nighthawk X10-R9000 prior to 1.0.4.26, an attacker may execute arbitrary system commands as root by sending a specially-crafted MAC address to the "NETGEAR Genie" SOAP endpoint at AdvancedQoS:GetCurrentBandwidthByMAC. Although this requires QoS being enabled, advanced QoS being enabled, and a valid authentication JWT, additional vulnerabilities (CVE-2019-12510) allow an attacker to interact with the entire SOAP API without authentication. Additionally, DNS rebinding techniques may be used to exploit this vulnerability remotely. Exploiting this vulnerability is somewhat involved. The following limitations apply to the payload and must be overcome for successful exploitation: - No more than 17 characters may be used. - At least one colon must be included to prevent mangling. - A single-quote and meta-character must be used to break out of the existing command. - Parent command remnants after the injection point must be dealt with. - The payload must be in all-caps. Despite these limitations, it is still possible to gain access to an interactive root shell via this vulnerability. Since the web server assigns certain HTTP headers to environment variables with all-caps names, it is possible to insert a payload into one such header and reference the subsequent environment variable in the injection point.
Vulnerable Configurations
| Part | Description | Count |
|---|---|---|
| OS | 1 | |
| Hardware | 1 |
Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE)
Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC)
- Command Line Execution through SQL Injection An attacker uses standard SQL injection methods to inject data into the command line for execution. This could be done directly through misuse of directives such as MSSQL_xp_cmdshell or indirectly through injection of data into the database that would be interpreted as shell commands. Sometime later, an unscrupulous backend application (or could be part of the functionality of the same application) fetches the injected data stored in the database and uses this data as command line arguments without performing proper validation. The malicious data escapes that data plane by spawning new commands to be executed on the host.
- Command Delimiters An attack of this type exploits a programs' vulnerabilities that allows an attacker's commands to be concatenated onto a legitimate command with the intent of targeting other resources such as the file system or database. The system that uses a filter or a blacklist input validation, as opposed to whitelist validation is vulnerable to an attacker who predicts delimiters (or combinations of delimiters) not present in the filter or blacklist. As with other injection attacks, the attacker uses the command delimiter payload as an entry point to tunnel through the application and activate additional attacks through SQL queries, shell commands, network scanning, and so on.
- Exploiting Multiple Input Interpretation Layers An attacker supplies the target software with input data that contains sequences of special characters designed to bypass input validation logic. This exploit relies on the target making multiples passes over the input data and processing a "layer" of special characters with each pass. In this manner, the attacker can disguise input that would otherwise be rejected as invalid by concealing it with layers of special/escape characters that are stripped off by subsequent processing steps. The goal is to first discover cases where the input validation layer executes before one or more parsing layers. That is, user input may go through the following logic in an application: In such cases, the attacker will need to provide input that will pass through the input validator, but after passing through parser2, will be converted into something that the input validator was supposed to stop.
- Argument Injection An attacker changes the behavior or state of a targeted application through injecting data or command syntax through the targets use of non-validated and non-filtered arguments of exposed services or methods.
- OS Command Injection In this type of an attack, an adversary injects operating system commands into existing application functions. An application that uses untrusted input to build command strings is vulnerable. An adversary can leverage OS command injection in an application to elevate privileges, execute arbitrary commands and compromise the underlying operating system.