CVE-2024-49846: Critical Memory Corruption Vulnerability in OTA Message Decoding

Overview

CVE-2024-49846 is a critical vulnerability that involves memory corruption during the decoding of Over-the-Air (OTA) messages from T3448 IE. This vulnerability carries a high severity score of 8.2, indicating its potential to cause significant damage to affected systems. Affected parties include any entities utilizing systems that decode OTA messages from T3448 IE. It matters because exploitation of this vulnerability may lead to system compromise and data leakage, posing a severe threat to data security and privacy.

Vulnerability Summary

CVE ID: CVE-2024-49846
Severity: High (8.2)
Attack Vector: Network
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: None
Impact: System compromise and potential data leakage

Affected Products

Product | Affected Versions

OTA Decoder | All versions before patch
T3448 IE | All versions before patch

How the Exploit Works

The exploit of CVE-2024-49846 involves using specially crafted OTA messages. The attacker sends these messages to the target system, and due to a flaw in the T3448 IE decoding process, these messages cause memory corruption. This corruption could potentially allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code, compromising the system and potentially leading to data leakage.

Conceptual Example Code

Here is a conceptual example of how the vulnerability might be exploited. This is a sample HTTP request including a malicious payload in the form of a manipulated OTA message:

POST /ota/decode HTTP/1.1
Host: target.example.com
Content-Type: application/json
{ "ota_message": "specially_crafted_malicious_message" }

In this example, ‘specially_crafted_malicious_message’ is a placeholder for the actual malicious message that an attacker might use to exploit the vulnerability.
It’s essential to understand that this is a generalized example. Actual exploitation might vary depending on various factors, including the specific configuration of the target system and the attacker’s resources and capabilities.

Recommended Mitigation

The best mitigation strategy for CVE-2024-49846 is to apply the vendor patch as soon as it becomes available. If it’s not immediately possible, using a Web Application Firewall (WAF) or Intrusion Detection System (IDS) can serve as temporary mitigation. These tools can detect and block attempts to exploit this vulnerability, providing an additional layer of protection until the patch can be applied.