How severe is CVE-2017-5521?

CVE-2017-5521 has a CVSS 3.1 base score of 8.1 (HIGH). EPSS estimates a 89.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days. It is listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog.

CVE-2017-5521: NETGEAR Multiple Devices Exposure of Sensitive

CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities

NETGEAR Multiple Devices Exposure of Sensitive Information Vulnerability is confirmed as actively exploited and is listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

Added to KEV

2022-09-08

Remediation due

2022-09-29

Required action
Apply updates per vendor instructions. If the affected device has since entered end-of-life, it should be disconnected if still in use.

CISA notes
https://kb.netgear.com/30632/Web-GUI-Password-Recovery-and-Exposure-Security-Vulnerability; https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2017-5521

Description

An issue was discovered on NETGEAR R8500, R8300, R7000, R6400, R7300, R7100LG, R6300v2, WNDR3400v3, WNR3500Lv2, R6250, R6700, R6900, and R8000 devices. They are prone to password disclosure via simple crafted requests to the web management server. The bug is exploitable remotely if the remote management option is set, and can also be exploited given access to the router over LAN or WLAN. When trying to access the web panel, a user is asked to authenticate; if the authentication is canceled and password recovery is not enabled, the user is redirected to a page that exposes a password recovery token. If a user supplies the correct token to the page /passwordrecovered.cgi?id=TOKEN (and password recovery is not enabled), they will receive the admin password for the router. If password recovery is set the exploit will fail, as it will ask the user for the recovery questions that were previously set when enabling that feature. This is persistent (even after disabling the recovery option, the exploit will fail) because the router will ask for the security questions.

Severity

CVSS 3.1 · CISA8.1 HIGH

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

SSVC · CISA-ADP

Exploitationactive

Automatableno

Technical impacttotal

Affected Products

Vendor	Product	Affected versions
-	-	n/a

References

3 Links

Exploits & PoCs

41205

Vulnerability databases

95457

Other references

http://kb.netgear.com/30632/Web-GUI-Password-Recovery-and-Exposure-Security-Vulnerability

Record Details

Published

2017-01-17

Last updated

2025-10-21

Assigner (CNA)

mitre

Credited to

CVE record data © The MITRE Corporation, used under the CVE Terms of Use. Exploited-in-the-wild data from the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (CC0). Exploit prediction scores by FIRST EPSS (first.org/epss). This site is not endorsed or certified by MITRE, NVD, CISA, or FIRST.