Exploited. On CISA's list since 2022-09-08.
NETGEAR Multiple Devices Exposure of Sensitive Information Vulnerability
CVE-2017-5521 · NETGEAR Multiple Devices · Published 2017-01-17
How bad would it be?
8.1 out of 10
CVSS rates it high.
How likely is it to be used?
89%
Estimated chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, among the top 1% of all scored flaws (EPSS, 2026-10-29).
Is it already being used?
Yes
CISA has seen it exploited in real attacks. For US government agencies the fix is deadline passed 1492 days ago (2022-09-29).
What CISA says to do
Apply updates per vendor instructions. If the affected device has since entered end-of-life, it should be disconnected if still in use.
Multiple NETGEAR devices are prone to admin password disclosure via simple crafted requests to the web management server.
What the flaw is
An issue was discovered on NETGEAR R8500, R8300, R7000, R6400, R7300, R7100LG, R6300v2, WNDR3400v3, WNR3500Lv2, R6250, R6700, R6900, and R8000 devices. They are prone to password disclosure via simple crafted requests to the web management server. The bug is exploitable remotely if the remote management option is set, and can also be exploited given access to the router over LAN or WLAN. When trying to access the web panel, a user is asked to authenticate; if the authentication is canceled and password recovery is not enabled, the user is redirected to a page that exposes a password recovery token. If a user supplies the correct token to the page /passwordrecovered.cgi?id=TOKEN (and password recovery is not enabled), they will receive the admin password for the router. If password recovery is set the exploit will fail, as it will ask the user for the recovery questions that were previously set when enabling that feature. This is persistent (even after disabling the recovery option, the exploit will fail) because the router will ask for the security questions.
From the NVD.
Fixes and advisories
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CWE-200 · CISA KEV. We have not selected a close learning match for this label.
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Exploited flaws from CISA's KEV catalogue. Chance of exploitation from EPSS by FIRST. Descriptions and scores from the NVD. This product uses the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD.