Cisco Small Business RV Series Routers Management Interface Remote Command Execution and Denial of Service Vulnerabilities

Vulnerability

The vulnerabilities affect the web-based management interface of Cisco Small Business RV016, RV042, RV042G, RV082, RV320, and RV325 routers [1]. Due to improper validation of user-supplied input in the interface, an authenticated remote attacker with administrator privileges could trigger a buffer overflow by sending crafted HTTP requests [1]. All firmware versions prior to the fixed releases are vulnerable [1].

Exploitation

An attacker must have valid administrator credentials to access the web-based management interface [1]. With those credentials, the attacker sends specially crafted HTTP requests to the affected device, exploiting the improper input validation to cause a buffer overflow [1]. No additional user interaction is required.

Impact

Successful exploitation allows the attacker to execute arbitrary code as the root user on the underlying operating system, or cause the device to reload, resulting in a denial of service (DoS) condition [1]. Both outcomes represent a full compromise of the affected router [1].

Mitigation

Cisco has released fixed firmware versions for the affected routers [1]. Users should upgrade to the appropriate patched version as specified in the Cisco security advisory [1]. There are no workarounds; the only mitigation is applying the firmware update [1].