CVE-2025-46634: Critical Cleartext Transmission of Sensitive Information Vulnerability in Tenda RX2 Pro

Overview

In this post, we are going to delve into the details of a serious cybersecurity vulnerability, CVE-2025-46634, affecting users of the Tenda RX2 Pro web management portal. This vulnerability can potentially allow an unauthenticated attacker to gain access to the web management portal by collecting credentials from observed or collected traffic. Despite implementing encryption, the system transmits the hash of users’ passwords in cleartext, a loophole that can be exploited by malicious entities. This vulnerability matters because it can lead to a full-scale system compromise or data leakage, posing a significant risk to both individual users and organizations relying on this portal.

Vulnerability Summary

CVE ID: CVE-2025-46634
Severity: High (CVSS: 8.2)
Attack Vector: Network
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: None
Impact: Potential system compromise or data leakage

Affected Products

Product | Affected Versions

Tenda RX2 Pro | 16.03.30.14

How the Exploit Works

The vulnerability lies in the Tenda RX2 Pro web management portal’s handling of user authentication. Despite implementing encryption, the system initially transmits the hash of the user’s password in cleartext. An unauthenticated attacker can observe or collect this cleartext traffic to retrieve the password hash. Since the hash is transmitted in cleartext, it can be easily collected by malicious entities. This hash can then be replayed to authenticate to the web management portal, allowing the attacker access to the system.

Conceptual Example Code

Here’s a conceptual example of how an attacker might exploit this vulnerability:

GET /login HTTP/1.1
Host: vulnerable-portal.example.com
User-Agent: Any standard web browser
Response:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: vulnerable-portal
Content-Type: text/html
Set-Cookie: JSESSIONID=1234567890; path=/; HttpOnly
Password-Hash: e99a18c428cb38d5f260853678922e03

In this example, the attacker observes the traffic and collects the `Password-Hash` from the response headers. This hash can then be used to replay the authentication process, granting the attacker access to the web management portal.

Mitigation Guidance

Users of the affected versions of Tenda RX2 Pro are advised to apply the vendor-supplied patch as soon as possible. As a temporary mitigation measure, users can employ a Web Application Firewall (WAF) or an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) to monitor, detect and prevent any suspicious activities. However, these are not long-term solutions and users should update their systems to the patched versions at the earliest.