Thousands of D-Link NAS devices have serious backdoor security issues

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D-Link NAS devices have reached end of life, so are at risk

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(Image credit: Future)

A high-severity vulnerability has been recently discovered in certain D-Link Network Attached Storage (NAS) instances which could be used to run malicious code, steal sensitive data, and mount denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.

Cybersecurity researcher Netsecfish, who discovered the flaw, found multiple instances of D-Link’s NAS devices have an arbitrary command injection flaw in the “system” parameter, and a hardcoded account that can be used to access the device. As a result, hackers can run commands as they please:

"Successful exploitation of this vulnerability could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary commands on the system, potentially leading to unauthorized access to sensitive information, modification of system configurations, or denial of service conditions," the researcher said.

No patch

The vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2024-3273. Apparently, there are roughly 92,000 of these D-Link NAS devices in use today, meaning that the attack surface is relatively large.

Multiple models are affected, including: DNS-320L Version 1.11, Version 1.03.0904.2013, Version 1.01.0702.2013; DNS-325 Version 1.01; DNS-327L Version 1.09, Version 1.00.0409.2013; and DNS-340L Version 1.08.

Unfortunately, the patch is not coming. These devices, D-Link confirmed to BleepingComputer, are way past their end of life, and as such will not be fixed. The company released a security bulletin, and urged its customers to replace the devices with newer versions as soon as possible.

"All D-Link Network Attached storage has been End of Life and of Service Life for many years [and] the resources associated with these products have ceased their development and are no longer supported," the spokesperson told the publication. "D-Link recommends retiring these products and replacing them with products that receive firmware updates."

Even those that receive firmware updates should never be exposed to the internet as cybercriminals see them as valuable targets.

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Sead Fadilpašić

Sead is a seasoned freelance journalist based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He writes about IT (cloud, IoT, 5G, VPN) and cybersecurity (ransomware, data breaches, laws and regulations). In his career, spanning more than a decade, he’s written for numerous media outlets, including Al Jazeera Balkans. He’s also held several modules on content writing for Represent Communications.