CVE-2016-10174 — D6100 Firmware
CRITICALCVE-2016-10174 is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.8) CWE-120 vulnerability in netgear d6100 firmware. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2022-03-25) — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.
The NETGEAR WNR2000v5 router contains a buffer overflow in the hidden_lang_avi parameter when invoking the URL /apply.cgi?/lang_check.html. This buffer overflow can be exploited by…
Exploitation Status
Actively exploited in the wild
- Confirmed by CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2022-03-25. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2022-04-15.
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA (KEV catalog and SSVC triage) for CVE-2016-10174.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2016-10174 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). In the shaded patch-first corner (EPSS 50%+, CVSS 7.0+).
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 394,803 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the 50–90% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Description
The NETGEAR WNR2000v5 router contains a buffer overflow in the hidden_lang_avi parameter when invoking the URL /apply.cgi?/lang_check.html. This buffer overflow can be exploited by an unauthenticated attacker to achieve remote code execution.
Affected Products
d6100 firmwarenetgeard7000 firmwarenetgeard7800 firmwarenetgearjnr1010v2 firmwarenetgearjnr3300 firmwarenetgearjwnr2010v5 firmwarenetgearResearch use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Netgear WNR2000v5 - Remote Code Execution
by Pedro Ribeiro · Dec 21, 2016
Netgear WNR2000v5 - 'hidden_lang_avi' Remote Stack Overflow (Metasploit)
by Pedro Ribeiro · Mar 24, 2017
Detection & mitigation playbook
Vendor / applianceDetect
Inventory every netgear d6100 firmware deployment and check each version against the affected-products list above.
Remediation status
No patch has shipped for CVE-2016-10174 yet — track the netgear d6100 firmware advisory for a fixed release and apply the workarounds below in the meantime.
Mitigate without a patch
Constrain what reaches the vulnerable code: limit the size and shape of untrusted input, isolate the affected component in a sandboxed or least-privileged process, and enable the platform's memory-safety mitigations (ASLR, stack protector, hardened allocator) so an out-of-bounds access is more likely to fail closed than to be exploitable. Alongside that, restrict the management interface to trusted networks and apply the vendor's recommended configuration mitigations.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2016-10174 being exploited in your environment?
Detect and block the exploit chain at execution, on systems you cannot patch yet.