Overview
A significant cybersecurity vulnerability, identified as CVE-2025-8822, has been discovered in multiple models of Linksys devices. This vulnerability has potential for system compromise or data leakage, posing a serious risk to users and organizations using the affected devices. Given that these devices are often used as a backbone for networking infrastructure, the risk presented by this vulnerability is notable.
The vulnerability stems from a stack-based buffer overflow in the function algDisable of the file /goform/setOpMode. This issue allows attackers to manipulate the opMode argument to trigger the overflow, potentially leading to remote code execution or data leakage. The vulnerability has been publicly disclosed and thus, may be exploited by malicious parties.
Vulnerability Summary
CVE ID: CVE-2025-8822
Severity: High (8.8 CVSS Score)
Attack Vector: Network
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: None
Impact: System compromise or data leakage
Affected Products
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Product | Affected Versions
Linksys RE6250 | up to 20250801
Linksys RE6300 | up to 20250801
Linksys RE6350 | up to 20250801
Linksys RE6500 | up to 20250801
Linksys RE7000 | up to 20250801
Linksys RE9000 | up to 20250801
How the Exploit Works
This vulnerability exploits the algDisable function’s handling of input data. By supplying an excessively long argument to the opMode parameter, it is possible to cause a stack-based buffer overflow. This overflow can corrupt memory and potentially lead to arbitrary code execution, allowing the attacker to gain control over the system. The vulnerability is remotely exploitable, meaning an attacker does not need physical access to the device to exploit this vulnerability; they only need network access.
Conceptual Example Code
While the exact exploit code has not been disclosed, an example of how the vulnerability might be exploited could look like this:
POST /goform/setOpMode HTTP/1.1
Host: vulnerable-linksys-device
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
opMode=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA...In this example, the ‘A’s represent an excessively long string that would trigger the buffer overflow. The attacker would need to craft a string of the correct length, possibly containing specific bytes to exploit this vulnerability successfully.