New Exploit Threatens Over 9,000 Hackable Cisco RV320/RV325 Routers Worldwide

If the connectivity and security of your organization rely on Cisco RV320 or RV325 Dual Gigabit WAN VPN routers, then you need to immediately install the latest firmware update released by the vendor last week.

Cyber attackers have actively been exploiting two newly patched high-severity router vulnerabilities in the wild after a security researcher released their proof-of-concept exploit code on the Internet last weekend.

The vulnerabilities in question are a command injection flaw (assigned CVE-2019-1652) and an information disclosure flaw (assigned CVE-2019-1653), a combination of which could allow a remote attacker to take full control of an affected Cisco router.

The first issue exists in RV320 and RV325 dual gigabit WAN VPN routers running firmware versions 1.4.2.15 through 1.4.2.19, and the second affects firmware versions 1.4.2.15 and 1.4.2.17, according to the Cisco’s advisory.

Both the vulnerabilities, discovered and responsibly reported to the company by German security firm RedTeam Pentesting, actually resides in the web-based management interface used for the routers and are remotely exploitable.

• CVE-2019-1652—The flaw allows an authenticated, remote attacker with administrative privileges on an affected device to execute arbitrary commands on the system.
• CVE-2019-1653—This flaw doesn’t require any authentication to reach the router’s web-based management portal, allowing attackers to retrieve sensitive information including the router’s configuration file containing MD5 hashed credentials and diagnostic information.

The PoC exploit code targeting Cisco RV320/RV325 routers published on the Internet first exploits CVE-2019-1653 to retrieve the configuration file from the router to obtain its hashed credentials and then exploits CVE-2019-1652 to execute arbitrary commands and gain complete control of the affected device.

Researchers from cybersecurity firm Bad Packets said they found at least 9,657 Cisco routers (6,247 RV320 and 3,410 RV325) worldwide that are vulnerable to the information disclosure vulnerability, most of which located in the United States.

The firm shared an interactive map, showing all vulnerable RV320/RV325 Cisco routers in 122 countries and on the network of 1,619 unique internet service providers.

Bad Packets said its honeypots detected opportunistic scanning activity for vulnerable routers from multiple hosts from Saturday, suggesting the hackers are actively trying to exploit the flaws to take full control of the vulnerable routers.

The best way to protect yourself from becoming the target of one such attack is to install the latest Cisco RV320 and RV325 Firmware release 1.4.2.20 as soon as possible.

Administrators who have not yet applied the firmware update are highly recommended to change their router’s admin and WiFi credentials considering themselves already compromised.