CVE-2018-3953

Severity: high (CVSS 7.2 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 13.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2018-10-17 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-78

Description

Devices in the Linksys ESeries line of routers (Linksys E1200 Firmware Version 2.0.09 and Linksys E2500 Firmware Version 3.0.04) are susceptible to OS command injection vulnerabilities due to improper filtering of data passed to and retrieved from NVRAM. Data entered into the 'Router Name' input field through the web portal is submitted to apply.cgi as the value to the 'machine_name' POST parameter. When the 'preinit' binary receives the SIGHUP signal, it enters a code path that continues until it reaches offset 0x0042B5C4 in the 'start_lltd' function. Within the 'start_lltd' function, a 'nvram_get' call is used to obtain the value of the user-controlled 'machine_name' NVRAM entry. This value is then entered directly into a command intended to write the host name to a file and subsequently executed.

Affected products

Linksys E1200 Firmware: 2.0.09
Linksys E2500 Firmware: 3.0.04

References

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