Severity
High
Analysis Summary
Advantech EKI industrial-grade wireless access point devices have been found to contain nearly two dozen security flaws, some of which might be used to circumvent authentication and run code with elevated privileges.
According to the researchers, the impacted devices' confidentiality, integrity, and availability are completely jeopardized by these vulnerabilities, which provide unauthenticated remote code execution with root privileges. The vulnerabilities have been fixed in the following firmware versions after responsible disclosure:
- 1.6.5 (for EKI-6333AC-2G and EKI-6333AC-2GD)
- 1.2.2 (for EKI-6333AC-1GPO)
Six of the 20 vulnerabilities found have been classified as critical, meaning that an attacker can implant a backdoor to gain continuous access to internal resources, cause a denial-of-service (DoS) condition, or even use compromised endpoints as Linux workstations to facilitate lateral movement and additional network penetration. A case of missing authentication for a crucial function is the subject of CVE-2024-50375 (CVSS score: 9.8), whereas five of the six major defects (from CVE-2024-50370 through CVE-2024-50374, CVSS scores: 9.8) pertain to inappropriate neutralization of special elements used in an operating system (OS) command.
Notable is also CVE-2024-50376 (CVSS score: 7.3), a cross-site scripting vulnerability that may be used to accomplish arbitrary code execution over-the-air by chaining with CVE-2024-50359 (CVSS score: 7.2), another example of OS command injection that would normally need authentication. However, for this attack to be successful, the external malicious user must broadcast specially prepared data from a rogue access point and be physically close to the Advantech access point.
The attack is initiated when an administrator accesses the web application's "Wi-Fi Analyzer" area. This results in the page automatically embedding data obtained from beacon frames that the attacker broadcasts without doing any sanitization checks. The SSID, often known as the "Wi-Fi network name," is one such piece of information that an attacker could disseminate through its rogue access point. As a result, the attacker might use CVE-2024-50376 to exploit cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability within the web application by inserting a JavaScript payload as the SSID for its rogue access point.
When combined with CVE-2024-50359, the outcome is the execution of arbitrary JavaScript code within the victim's web browser, which might lead to command injection at the OS level with root privileges. This could be a reverse shell that gives the threat actor continuous remote access. By doing this, attackers would be able to take over the compromised device remotely, run commands, and further infiltrate the network to retrieve data or run other malicious scripts.
Impact
- Privilege Escalation
- Code Execution
- Denial of Service
- Cross-Site Scripting
Indicators of Compromise
CVE
- CVE-2024-50370
- CVE-2024-50371
- CVE-2024-50372
- CVE-2024-50373
- CVE-2024-50374
- CVE-2024-50375
- CVE-2024-50376
- CVE-2024-50359
Remediation
- Organizations must test their assets for the vulnerabilities mentioned above and apply the available security patch or mitigation steps as soon as possible.
- Implement multi-factor authentication to add an extra layer of security to login processes.
- Regularly monitor network activity for any unusual behavior, as this may indicate that a cyberattack is underway.
- Organizations must stay vigilant and follow best practices for cybersecurity to protect their systems and data from potential threats. This includes regularly updating software and implementing strong access controls and monitoring tools.
- Develop a comprehensive incident response plan to respond effectively in case of a security breach or data leakage.
- Maintain regular backups of critical data and systems to ensure data recovery in case of a security incident.
- Adhere to security best practices, including the principle of least privilege, and ensure that users and applications have only the necessary permissions.
- Establish a robust patch management process to ensure that security patches are evaluated, tested, and applied promptly.
- Conduct security audits and assessments to evaluate the overall security posture of your systems and networks.
- Implement network segmentation to contain and isolate potential threats to limit their impact on critical systems.