Juplink’s RX4-1800 WiFi router was found to have multiple vulnerabilities exposing its owners to potential intrusion in their local WiFi network and complete overtake of the device. An attacker can remotely take over a device after using a targeted or phishing attack to change the router’s administrative password, effectively locking the owner out of their device.

Two vulnerabilities were uncovered, with links to the associated technical advisories below:

  • Technical Advisory: CSRF Vulnerability in Juplink RX4-1800 WiFi Router (CVE-2022-37413)
  • Technical Advisory: Lack of Current Password Validation for Password Change Functionality (CVE-2022-37414)

Technical Advisories:

CSRF Vulnerability in Juplink RX4-1800 WiFi Router (CVE-2022-37413)

Vendor: Juplink
Vendor URL: https://www.juplink.com
Versions Affected: All Versions
Systems Affected: RX4-1800
CVE Identifier: CVE-2022-37413
Severity: High 7.5 (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H)

Summary

The Juplink RX4-1800 WiFi router is a general consumer Wifi router that provides a web interface for configuration. The browser interface of the router was found to be vulnerable to cross-site request forgery (CSRF).

Impact

The WiFi router interface is vulnerable to CSRF. An attacker can trick a user into making unintended state-changing requests to the application, including changing the admin account password.

Details

Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) is an attack that occurs when a user interacts with a malicious web site while logged into a vulnerable web application in the same browser. The malicious web site can cause the user’s browser to submit requests to the vulnerable application, causing various state-changing requests to be made in the context of the victim’s active session.

If the user is logged into the router web interface, an attacker could create a page like the example below and trick a user into clicking it to change the router administrative account password to any password of the attacker’s choosing.

Recommendation

This issue will remain exploitable to authenticated users as long as the vendor doesn’t fix it through a router firmware update.

Lack of Current Password Validation for Password Change Functionality (CVE-2022-37414)

Vendor: Juplink
Vendor URL: https://www.juplink.com
Versions Affected: All Versions
Systems Affected: RX4-1800
CVE Identifier: CVE-2022-37414
Severity: Medium 6.8 (CVSS v3.1 AV:A/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H)

Summary

The Juplink RX4-1800 WiFi router is a general consumer WiFi router that provides a web interface and admin account for configuration. It was found that the router web interface has insecure password change functionality.

Impact

An attacker can change the password of the admin account.

Details

There is password change functionality, referred to as ‘Modify Password’, located at the /nm_security.htm endpoint. When performing a password change, the user is asked to provide the old password. If the ‘Old Password’ field is blank or incorrect, an alert box is presented that says, “The old password is wrong!”

Use an interception proxy to inspect the HTTP POST request that is made when a valid password change request is submitted. You will see in the example POST request below that the old password is not included as a parameter in the body of the request, therefore there is no server-side validation of the old password. An attacker can use Cross-Site Request Forgery to trick the user and send a request to the web interface to change the password of the router’s admin account to one of the attacker’s choosing.

Recommendation

This issue will remain exploitable to authenticated users as long as the vendor doesn’t fix it through a router firmware update.

Disclosure Timeline:

July 1, 2022: Initial email from NCC to Juplink announcing to vendor that vulnerabilities were found in one of their devices.

August 12, 2022: NCC reached out to Juplink again to inform of the intent to publicly disclose the vulnerabilities unless they responded to us within the next 30 days.

September 22 2022: NCC Group informs Juplink that we will now be publishing all associated Technical Advisories for these vulnerabilities. 

As of the publishing date of this Technical Advisory, no response from Juplink has been received.

Thanks to

Nicolas Bidron, Andrea Shirley-Bellande, Jennifer Fernick, and David Goldsmith for their support throughout the research and disclosure process.

About NCC Group

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