What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities
CVE-2021-40847
- Severity: high (CVSS 8.1 v3.1)
- Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
- EPSS: 10.0% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
- Public exploit or detection template: yes
- Published: 2021-09-21 · updated 2026-06-17
- Weakness: CWE-319
Description
The update process of the Circle Parental Control Service on various NETGEAR routers allows remote attackers to achieve remote code execution as root via a MitM attack. While the parental controls themselves are not enabled by default on the routers, the Circle update daemon, circled, is enabled by default. This daemon connects to Circle and NETGEAR to obtain version information and updates to the circled daemon and its filtering database. However, database updates from NETGEAR are unsigned and downloaded via cleartext HTTP. As such, an attacker with the ability to perform a MitM attack on the device can respond to circled update requests with a crafted, compressed database file, the extraction of which gives the attacker the ability to overwrite executable files with attacker-controlled code. This affects R6400v2 1.0.4.106, R6700 1.0.2.16, R6700v3 1.0.4.106, R6900 1.0.2.16, R6900P 1.3.2.134, R7000 1.0.11.123, R7000P 1.3.2.134, R7850 1.0.5.68, R7900 1.0.4.38, R8000 1.0.4.68, and RS400 1.5.0.68.
Affected products
- NETGEAR R6400V2 Firmware: 1.0.4.106
- NETGEAR R6700: 1.0.2.16
- NETGEAR R6700V3 Firmware: 1.0.4.106
- NETGEAR R6900 Firmware: 1.0.2.16
- NETGEAR R6900P Firmware: 1.3.2.134
- NETGEAR R7000: 1.0.11.123
- NETGEAR R7000P: 1.3.2.134
- NETGEAR R7850 Firmware: 1.0.5.68
- NETGEAR R7900 Firmware: 1.0.4.38
- NETGEAR R8000 Firmware: 1.0.4.68
- NETGEAR Rs400 Firmware: 1.5.0.68
References
- https://blog.grimm-co.com/2021/09/mama-always-told-me-not-to-trust.html
- https://kb.netgear.com/000064039/Security-Advisory-for-Remote-Code-Execution-on-Some-Routers-PSV-2021-0204
- https://blog.grimm-co.com/2021/09/mama-always-told-me-not-to-trust.html
- https://kb.netgear.com/000064039/Security-Advisory-for-Remote-Code-Execution-on-Some-Routers-PSV-2021-0204
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