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Almost 800,000 SonicWall VPN appliances online are vulnerable to CVE-2020

criticalExploit / PoCimportance 60CVE-2020-5135

Vulnerabilities mentionedAll →

CVEVulnerabilityCVSSEPSSFlagsAffectedExposurePublished
CVE-2020-5135
Buffer Overflow in SonicWall SonicOS Enables DoS and Potential RCE on Firewalls

CVE-2020-5135 is a buffer overflow vulnerability (CWE-120) in SonicWall's SonicOS firewall operating system. A remote attacker can trigger the flaw by sending a maliciously crafted request to a firewall running SonicOS, which can crash network services and cause a Denial of Service, with potential for arbitrary code execution. Because SonicOS runs on SonicWall perimeter firewalls and remote-access gateways, successful code execution would give an attacker a foothold at the network edge, a high-value position for both DoS and follow-on compromise. Any organization operating a SonicWall firewall running SonicOS is potentially affected. The vulnerability was added to CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2022-03-15 with known ransomware use, and EPSS estimates a 26.9% probability of exploitation within 30 days (98th percentile), indicating active and elevated exploitation risk even though no public PoC is known.

Do: Apply updated SonicOS firmware per SonicWall's instructions, as required by the CISA KEV listing, and confirm against SonicWall's advisory which firmware versions fix CVE-2020-5135 for your appliance. Until patched, restrict firewall management and remote-access (SSL-VPN) interfaces to trusted networks rather than the open internet. Given known ransomware use, hunt for signs of exploitation such as firewall crashes/reboots and anomalous outbound or lateral activity.

9.827% KEV ransomware
  • SonicWall SonicOS
mass≈ hundreds of thousands of internet-exposed SonicWall firewalls/remote-access endpoints

Indicators of compromiseAll →

TypeIndicatorContext
ipv46.0.5.3erability affected SonicOS Gen 6 version 6.5.4.7, 6.5.1.12, 6.0.5.3, SonicOSv 6.5.4.v and Gen 7 version 7.0.0.0.” reads the adv
ipv46.5.1.11following versions: SonicOS 6.5.4.7-79n and earlier SonicOS 6.5.1.11-4n and earlier SonicOS 6.0.5.3-93o and earlier SonicOSv 6.5
ipv46.5.1.12This vulnerability affected SonicOS Gen 6 version 6.5.4.7, 6.5.1.12, 6.0.5.3, SonicOSv 6.5.4.v and Gen 7 version 7.0.0.0.” read
ipv46.5.4.4.11-4n and earlier SonicOS 6.0.5.3-93o and earlier SonicOSv 6.5.4.4-44v-21-794 and earlier SonicOS 7.0.0.0-1 Security experts f
ipv46.5.4.7. The vulnerability affects the following versions: SonicOS 6.5.4.7-79n and earlier SonicOS 6.5.1.11-4n and earlier SonicOS 6.0
Full article455 words · extracted from securityaffairs.com · click to collapse

The Tripwire VERT security team spotted almost 800,000 SonicWall VPN appliances exposed online that are vulnerable to the CVE-2020-5135 RCE flaw.

Security experts from the Tripwire VERT security team have discovered 795,357 SonicWall VPN appliances that were exposed online that are vulnerable to the CVE-2020-5135 RCE flaw.

“A buffer overflow vulnerability in SonicOS allows a remote attacker to cause Denial of Service (DoS) and potentially execute arbitrary code by sending a malicious request to the firewall. This vulnerability affected SonicOS Gen 6 version 6.5.4.7, 6.5.1.12, 6.0.5.3, SonicOSv 6.5.4.v and Gen 7 version 7.0.0.0.” reads the advisory published by SonicWall.

The CVE-2020-5135 is a stack-based buffer overflow that affects the SonicWall Network Security Appliance (NSA). The vulnerability can be exploited by an unauthenticated HTTP request involving a custom protocol handler.

The flaw resides in the HTTP/HTTPS service used for product management as well as SSL VPN remote access.

“An unskilled attacker can use this flaw to cause a persistent denial of service condition. Tripwire VERT has also confirmed the ability to divert execution flow through stack corruption indicating that a code execution exploit is likely feasible.” reads the analysis published by Tripwire. “This flaw exists pre-authentication and within a component (SSLVPN) which is typically exposed to the public Internet.”

This vulnerability is very dangerous, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic because SonicWall NSA devices are used as firewalls and SSL VPN portals allow employees to access corporate networks.

The vulnerability affects the following versions:

  • SonicOS 6.5.4.7-79n and earlier
  • SonicOS 6.5.1.11-4n and earlier
  • SonicOS 6.0.5.3-93o and earlier
  • SonicOSv 6.5.4.4-44v-21-794 and earlier
  • SonicOS 7.0.0.0-1

Security experts from Tenable have published a post detailing the flaw, they also shared Shodan dorks for searching SonicWall VPNs.

“Our own Shodan search for vulnerable SonicWall devices led us to two specific search queries:

The combined results from Shodan using these search queries led to a total of 795,674 hosts. In the VERT advisory, they specified that 795,357 hosts were vulnerable.” wrote Tenable.

At the time of this post, the first search query provides 448,400 results, the second one 24,149, most of the vulnerable devices are in the United States.

SonicWall has already released updates to address the flaw, the company also recommends to disconnect SSL VPN portals from the Internet as temporary mitigation before installing one of the following versions:

  • SonicOS 6.5.4.7-83n
  • SonicOS 6.5.1.12-1n
  • SonicOS 6.0.5.3-94o
  • SonicOS 6.5.4.v-21s-987
  • Gen 7 7.0.0.0-2 and onwards

The CVE-2020-5135 is a critical vulnerability rated as 9.4 out of 10, it could be easily exploited by unauthenticated attackers.

At the time this post was published, no PoC exploit code was available for the CVE-2020-5135 flaw.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, CVE-2020-5135)

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Text extracted automatically; images, tables and formatting may be missing. Original: https://securityaffairs.com/109560/hacking/sonicwall-cve-2020-5135-flaw.html