September 21st, 2024

4 Exploits, 1 bug: exploiting cve-2024-20017 4 different ways

CVE-2024-20017 is a buffer overflow vulnerability in MediaTek chipsets' wappd service, allowing various exploit strategies. The article details discovery through fuzzing and emphasizes creative exploit development in security research.

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4 Exploits, 1 bug: exploiting cve-2024-20017 4 different ways

The article discusses the exploitation of a vulnerability identified as CVE-2024-20017, which affects the wappd service in various MediaTek chipsets used in devices like routers. The vulnerability is a buffer overflow caused by a lack of bounds checking when handling attacker-controlled packet data. The author presents four distinct exploit strategies that leverage this vulnerability, ranging from simple techniques to more complex methods that account for various exploit mitigations. The first exploit involves a return address corruption to redirect execution to the system() function, while subsequent exploits utilize different methods such as arbitrary writes and return-oriented programming (ROP) to achieve code execution. The article also highlights the discovery process of the vulnerability through fuzzing techniques and provides a detailed analysis of the code flow leading to the overflow. The author emphasizes the creative aspects of exploit development, showcasing how different conditions and mitigations can influence the exploitation process. The post serves as a case study for understanding the intricacies of exploiting a single vulnerability in multiple ways.

- CVE-2024-20017 is a buffer overflow vulnerability in the wappd service of MediaTek chipsets.

- The vulnerability allows for multiple exploit strategies, including return address corruption and arbitrary writes.

- The author discovered the vulnerability through fuzzing techniques.

- The article provides a detailed analysis of the code flow leading to the overflow.

- It emphasizes the creative aspects of exploit development in the context of security research.

Link Icon 4 comments
By @lucb1e - 4 months
For those not familiar with every CVE ID, that's a WiFi driver bug for a "chipset commonly used on embedded platforms that support Wifi6 (802.11ax) including Ubiquiti, Xiaomi, and Netgear devices"
By @jmholla - 4 months
From the other thread: Ubiquiti devices are not impacted by this. [0][1]

[0]: https://community.ui.com/questions/CVE-2024-20017/b3f1a425-d...

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41610266

By @dang - 4 months
Recent and related:

Critical Exploit in MediaTek Wi-Fi Chipsets: Zero-Click Vulnerability - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41605680 - Sept 2024 (97 comments)

By @cynicalsecurity - 4 months
I would have really chuckled if there were 2 exploits.