Researcher Peter Adkins has disclosed details on an authentication bypass and information disclosure vulnerability affecting several Netgear wireless routers.
Last week, he revealed to the Full Disclosure mailing list that “A number of Netgear WNDR devices contain an embedded SOAP service that is seemingly for use with the Netgear Genie application.” Due to the way the SOAP service is implemented, affected devices are vulnerable to being “interrogated and hijacked with as little as a well placed HTTP query,” he explained.
SOAP allows for viewing and setting of certain router parameters, including WLAN credentials and SSIDs (as well as guest credentials and SSIDs), connected clients, and parental control settings, Adkins wrote, noting that security issues “can be leveraged ‘externally' over the internet, but require devices to have remote/WAN management enabled.”
Adkins said he reported the security hole, which remains open, to Netgear last month.
