ASUS RT-N16 - Text-plain Admin Password Disclosure

Description

Several ASUS routers include reflected Cross-Site Scripting (CWE-79) and
authentication bypass (CWE-592) vulnerabilities. An attacker who can lure
a victim to browse to a web site containing a specially crafted JavaScript
payload can execute arbitrary commands on the router as administrator
(root). No user interaction is required.

Impact

An attacker can create a JavaScript payload that uses an exploit to unearth
the administrative password from the victim’s ASUS router and logs in to
the device. Once logged in the payload can perform administrative actions,
including arbitrary command execution as administrator (root).

Details

The CSRF vulnerability CVE-2013-3093 discovered by Jacob Holcomb /
Independent Security Evaluators (*) affecting various ASUS routers has been
known for some time. The vulnerability enables an attacker to forge HTML
forms and execute actions on the behalf of the target user (admin),
enabling executing administrative functions. Another vulnerability allows
executing arbitrary commands as administrator (root). ASUS was notified of
these issues on March 29th 2013.

These vulnerabilities were not considered critical, likely because of the
seemingly strict prerequisites for the attack:

"- The victim must have an active web application session on their ASUS
router.

• The victim must follow a link crafted by an attacker (e.g., by clicking
  the link directly, or through some other mechanism such as redirection
  from a malicious site).
• The victim must have the necessary permissions to render and execute
  the forged HTTP."
  (*) http://securityevaluators.com/knowledge/case_studies/routers/Vulnerability_Catalog.pdf

The two newly discovered vulnerabilities, described in more detail below,
enable exploiting the earlier vulnerabilities in an automated fashion. The
attack requires no interaction from the user, other than browsing to a
website that has been injected with JavaScript code crafted by the attacker.
The exploit could be embedded into various otherwise benign sites via e.g.
malicious advertisement banners or by exploiting persistent Cross-Site
Scripting vulnerabilities. The attacks could also be carried out with
phishing email campaigns.

The attack utilizes a reflected Cross-Site Scripting vulnerability on the
unauthenticated error page to bypass the same-origin policy protection.
Vulnerability number two described below is used to obtain the
administrator’s password. The reflected JavaScript payload executes within
the context of the ASUS device and is able to utilize the CVE-2013-3093
CSRF vulnerability to perform actions on the behalf of the user (admin).
The exploit utilizes the “SystemCmd” arbitrary command execution feature
to allow remote administrative telnet connectivity from all addresses.

New vulnerabilities

1. Reflected Cross-Site Scripting (CWE-79), CVE-2014-1225

There is a Cross-Site Scripting vulnerability on the router error page:

http://192.168.1.1/error_page.htm?flag='%2Balert('XSS')%2B'

The error page is accessible without authentication. This vulnerability
enables the attacker to bypass same-origin policy restrictions enforced
by XMLHttpRequest.

2. Authentication bypass (CWE-592)

The router error page http://192.168.1.1/error_page.htm includes the
current administrative password in clear text.

For example if the administrative password is “Joshua”, the page includes
the following dynamically generated JavaScript:

if(‘1’ == ‘0’ || ‘Joshua’ == ‘admin’)

The error page is accessible without authentication. This vulnerability
enables the attacker with same-origin rights, obtained by utilizing the
vulnerability above, to read the password by utilizing an XMLHttpRequest
call. The script can then perform actions as administrator by utilizing
further XMLHttpRequest calls.

Vulnerable devices

The vulnerabilities were discovered from an ASUS RT-N16 device, firmware
version 3.0.0.4.374_979. By sampling a small set of ASUS firmware images
the following models were also found likely to be vulnerable:

ASUS RT-N10U, firmware 3.0.0.4.374_168
ASUS RT-N56U, firmware 3.0.0.4.374_979
ASUS DSL-N55U, firmware 3.0.0.4.374_1397 *
ASUS RT-AC66U, firmware 3.0.0.4.374_2050 *
ASUS RT-N15U, firmware 3.0.0.4.374_16
ASUS RT-N53, firmware 3.0.0.4.374_311

*) ASUS DSL-N55U and ASUS RT-AC66U did not appear vulnerable to the
authentication bypass issue. These devices are still vulnerable to the XSS
and if the default password ‘admin’ has not been changed, they are easily
exploitable as well.

This list is by no means comprehensive. It is likely that other devices are
vulnerable as well.

Vendor recommendations

1. Fix the Cross-Site Scripting vulnerabilities, at least from the
   unauthenticated part of the web interface (error_page.htm)
2. Fix the admin password disclosure on error_page.htm
3. Fix the CSRF (CVE-2013-3093) issue by utilizing anti-CSRF protection

End user mitigation

1. Install the latest firmware update, version 3.0.0.4.374.4422 or later.

or

2. If no firmware update has been released, the end users can partially
   mitigate the vulnerabilities by changing the “Router Login Name” via
   the “Administration - System” menu to be something other than “admin”.
   Changing the router default network to something else than
   192.168.1.0/24 might also grant some limited protection.

Proof-of-concept

https://sintonen.fi/advisories/asuspwn/

Credits

The vulnerabilities were discovered by Harry Sintonen / nSense Oy.

Previous work

The Cross-Site Request Forgery and command execution vulnerabilities
(CVE-2013-3093) were discovered by Jacob Holcomb / Independent Security
Evaluators.

The authentication bypass (along with multiple sensitive information
disclosure) issue was independently discovered as CVE-2013-5947, yet
to be publically disclosured.