Talos Vulnerability Report

SUMMARY

An arbitrary code execution vulnerability exists in the adm.cgi set_MeshAp() functionality of Wavlink AC3000 M33A8.V5030.210505. A specially crafted HTTP request can lead to arbitrary code execution. An attacker can make an authenticated HTTP request to trigger this vulnerability.

CONFIRMED VULNERABLE VERSIONS

The versions below were either tested or verified to be vulnerable by Talos or confirmed to be vulnerable by the vendor.

Wavlink AC3000 M33A8.V5030.210505

PRODUCT URLS

Wavlink AC3000 - https://www.wavlink.com/en_us/product/WL-WN533A8.html

CVSSv3 SCORE

9.1 - CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H

CWE

CWE-120 - Buffer Copy without Checking Size of Input (‘Classic Buffer Overflow’)

DETAILS

The Wavlink AC3000 wireless router is predominately one of the most popular gigabit routers in the US, in part due to both its potential wireless and wired speed capabilities and extremely low price point (costing at the time of this writing ~$60 USD). Among the configuration options, it’s also able to act as a standalone wireless gateway, a basic network router, or a wireless repeater.

When interacting with and configuring the Wavlink AC3000 wifi router, as is typical of most wifi routers, an administrator logs in via some web portal and configures appropriate options via the HTTP interface. In the case of this particular router, and in another somewhat common execution pattern, these HTML pages can invoke .cgi binaries due to how the lighttpd server is configured. Since all of these .shtml and .cgi files are located in the web root, anyone with network access to the device doesn’t actually need to log in to the device to interact with these .cgi files, and it usually is the responsibility of the .cgi binary to check if the authentication is completed successfully. On this device, one will see a check_valid_user() function in each individual .cgi binary which will check the session cookie of the HTTP request to see if it’s coming from a validly logged in user.

Assuming that we’ve passed this check in the adm.cgi binary, we then run into a set of functions that we can call based off of what we pass for the page= parameter in our HTTP POST request. Of the available commands, we focus on the following:

004018f4                          else if (strcmp(webget_page, "wzdMeshAp") == 0)
00401c60                              set_MeshAp(contlen_buf)

If we provide page=wzdMeshAp, we enter the set_MeshAp function and our provided POST data is further parsed therein:

00407c44  int32_t set_MeshAp(int32_t arg1)
00407c8c      nvram_bufget(0, "OperationMode")
00407ca8      nvram_bufget(0, "lan_ipaddr")
00407cc4      int32_t TouchLinkEn = nvram_bufget(0, "TouchLinkEn") 
// [...]
00407f3c      char* wlan_ssid2 = strdup(web_get("wlan_ssid2", arg1, 0)) //[1]
// [...]
004083c8      if (strcmp(TouchLinkEn, "1") == 0) // [2]
00408940          void var_98
00408940          sprintf(&var_98, "%s_Touch", wlan_ssid2) // [3]
0040895c          nvram_bufset(2, "SSID3", &var_98)
004083e8      if (strcmp($v0, "Mesh") != 0)
00408920          nvram_bufset(1, "SSID1", $v0_15)

At [1], the binary duplicates what we provide for the wlan_ssid2 POST parameter, and then checks to see if an nvram variable is set at [2]. Assuming this is true (which it is by default), then we sprintf the wlan_ssid2 buffer to the stack. Since our input buffer does not really have any length restrictions, we can easily have a buffer greater than 0x98 in length and easily overwrite the stack offset that will be read into the $ra return address register, resulting in code execution.

Crash Information

Thread 2.1 "adm.cgi" hit Breakpoint 3, 0x00408940 in set_MeshAp ()
(gdb) x/1s $a2
0x93f0e0:       "\bp\377\177\bp\377\177\bp\377\177\bp\377\177\bp\377\177\bp\377\177\bp\377\177\bp\377\177\bp\377\177\bp\377\177\bp\377\177\bp\377\177\bp\377\177\bp\377\177\bp\377\177\bp\377\177\bp\377\177\bp\377\177\bp\377\177\bp\377\177\bp\377\177\bp\377\177\bp\377\177\bp\377\177\bp\377\177\bp\377\177\bp\377\177\bp\377\177\bp\377\177\bp\377\177\bp\377\177\bp\377\177\bp\377\177\bp\377\177\bp\377\177\bp\377\177AAAAAAAA"

(gdb) c
Continuing.
[Detaching after fork from child process 21128]
[Detaching after fork from child process 21129]

Thread 2.1 "adm.cgi" received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
0x41414141 in ?? ()

(gdb) bt
#0  0x41414141 in ?? ()
Backtrace stopped: previous frame identical to this frame (corrupt stack?)
(gdb) info reg
          zero       at       v0       v1       a0       a1       a2       a3
 R0   00000000 00000000 00000000 ffffffff 00000003 7ff969a4 00000000 00000000
            t0       t1       t2       t3       t4       t5       t6       t7
 R8   00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000001 00000000 00000000 00000001
            s0       s1       s2       s3       s4       s5       s6       s7
 R16  7fff7008 7fff7008 7fff7008 7fff7008 7fff7008 7fff7008 7fff7008 7fff7008
            t8       t9       k0       k1       gp       sp       s8       ra
 R24  00000000 772d7450 00000010 00000000 77374490 7ff96b18 41414141 41414141
        status       lo       hi badvaddr    cause       pc
      0100fc13 00000400 00000000 41414140 50800008 41414141
          fcsr      fir      hi1      lo1      hi2      lo2      hi3      lo3
      00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
        dspctl  restart
      00000000 00000000

TIMELINE

2024-07-25 - Initial Vendor Contact
2024-07-29 - Requesting reply from vendor
2024-07-30 - Vendor confirms receipt
2024-07-30 - Vendor Disclosure
2024-07-30 - Vendor confirms receipt
2024-09-02 - Status update request sent
2024-10-15 - Status update request. Upcoming expiration date announced.
2024-10-22 - Vendor replies product has been discontinued, but patches are being worked on
2024-11-04 - Status update request for patch release dates
2024-11-12 TALOS advisory release date announced
2025-01-14 - Public Release