As Synology explains in security advisories published two days after the flaws were demoed at Pwn2Own Ireland 2024 to hijack a Synology BeeStation BST150-4T device, the security flaws enable remote attackers to gain remote code execution as root on vulnerable NAS appliances exposed online.
“The vulnerability was initially discovered, within just a few hours, as a replacement for another Pwn2Own submission. The issue was disclosed to Synology immediately after demonstration, and within 48 hours a patch was made available which resolves the vulnerability,” Midnight Blue said.
From a different source:
Synology proactively sponsors and works with security researchers as part of product security initiatives. At this year’s Pwn2Own Ireland 2024 event, which took place in late October, we successfully discovered and resolved multiple security vulnerabilities.
While these vulnerabilities are not being exploited, we recommend all Synology device administrators immediately take action to secure their systems by updating due to the scope and severity of specific issues.
Was it that the talk was a last minute change (replacing another scheduled talk) so the responsible disclosure was made in a rush without giving synology more time to provide the patch before the talk was presented?
If so, who decided it was a good idea to present something regarding a vulnerability without the fix being available yet?
There’s a give-and-take here, where disclosing the vulnerability should be done soon enough to be responsible to affected users, but not so late that it’s seen as pandering to the vendor.
We’ve already seen how much vendors drag their feet when they are given time to fix a vuln before the disclosure, and almost all the major vendors have tried to pull this move where they keep delaying fix unless it becomes public.
Synology hasn’t been very reactive to fixing CVEs unless they’re very public. One nasty vulnerability in the old DSM 6 was found at a hackathon by a researcher (I’ll edit and post the number later), but the fix wasn’t included in the main update stream, you had to go get the patch manually and apply it.
Vendors must have their feet held to the fire on vulns, or they don’t bother doing anything.
I hear you, but how much time was Synology given? If it was no time at all (which it seems is what happened here??), that does not even give Synology a chance and that’s what I’m concerned with. If they get a month (give or take), then sure, disclose it and too bad for them if they don’t have a fix, they should have taken it more seriously, but I’m wondering about how much time they were even given in this case.
Was that the file transfer allowed for remote code execution one? That’d be the one that sticks out to me. 3 or 4 years ago iirc?
Edit: CVE-2021-27649 is the one that came to mind, not sure if that’s the one you’re referring to.
The vulnerability was discovered during a pwn2own competition. The competition was endorsed and probably sponsored by Synology. Not sure what the problem is?
To be somewhat fair, if you’re exposing these devices directly to the internet without even basic auth in front of them, you’re a damn fool.
Synology devices all have authentication enabled by default.
Basic auth keeps the actual login page from being accessed. Even having a login page accessible can lead to plenty of issues depending on your web framework. If you’re doing this, you should be worried. If you don’t even know what basic auth is, you should be really worried.