CVE-2017-5521: NETGEAR Multiple Devices Exposure of Sensitive Information Vulnerability

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2017-5521 is a high (CVSS 8.1) vulnerability in NETGEAR Multiple Devices. It is known to be exploited: CISA lists it, first on 08-09-2022. EPSS estimates a 89.35% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 99.7% of scored vulnerabilities. 2 public exploits are recorded.

Timeline

1. 17-01-2017
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 08-09-2022
   Added to CISA KEVNETGEAR Multiple Devices Exposure of Sensitive Information Vulnerability
3. 29-09-2022
   CISA remediation dueApply updates per vendor instructions. If the affected device has since entered end-of-life, it should be disconnected if still in use.
4. 21-10-2025
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

An issue was discovered on NETGEAR R8500, R8300, R7000, R6400, R7300, R7100LG, R6300v2, WNDR3400v3, WNR3500Lv2, R6250, R6700, R6900, and R8000 devices. They are prone to password disclosure via simple crafted requests to the web management server. The bug is exploitable remotely if the remote management option is set, and can also be exploited given access to the router over LAN or WLAN. When trying to access the web panel, a user is asked to authenticate; if the authentication is canceled and password recovery is not enabled, the user is redirected to a page that exposes a password recovery token. If a user supplies the correct token to the page /passwordrecovered.cgi?id=TOKEN (and password recovery is not enabled), they will receive the admin password for the router. If password recovery is set the exploit will fail, as it will ask the user for the recovery questions that were previously set when enabling that feature. This is persistent (even after disabling the recovery option, the exploit will fail) because the router will ask for the security questions.

No weakness data has been published for this record.