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Exploiting zero days in abandoned hardware
We successfully exploited two discontinued network devices at DistrictCon’s inaugural Junkyard competition in February, winning runner-up for Most Innovative Exploitation Technique. Our exploit chains demonstrate why end-of-life hardware poses persistent security risks.
Our exploit chains demonstrate why end-of-life (EOL) hardware poses persistent security risks: when manufacturers stop releasing updates, unpatched vulnerabilities remain frozen in time like fossils, creating perfect targets for attackers. First, we developed three ways (videos 1, 2, and 3) to hack the Netgear router by chaining multiple LAN-side vulnerabilities in the UPnP daemon, including authentication bypass, buffer overflows, and command injection, which gave us a remote root shell. UPnP accepts SOAP messages (XML-formatted commands) to control router functions, making it a prime target due to its complex parsing requirements and privileged system access.
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