CVE-2017-6862 — Wnr2000 Firmware
CRITICALCVE-2017-6862 is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.8) CWE-120 vulnerability in netgear wnr2000 firmware. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2022-06-08) — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. A fix is available — see the affected versions and patch details below.
NETGEAR WNR2000v3 devices before 1.1.2.14, WNR2000v4 devices before 1.0.0.66, and WNR2000v5 devices before 1.0.0.42 allow authentication bypass and remote code execution via a buffer…
Exploitation Status
Actively exploited in the wild
- Confirmed by CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2022-06-08. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2022-06-22.
- 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-2017-6862.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2017-6862 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 395,249 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the 10–50% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Description
NETGEAR WNR2000v3 devices before 1.1.2.14, WNR2000v4 devices before 1.0.0.66, and WNR2000v5 devices before 1.0.0.42 allow authentication bypass and remote code execution via a buffer overflow that uses a parameter in the administration webapp. The NETGEAR ID is PSV-2016-0261.
Affected Products
wnr2000 firmwarenetgearResearch use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Detection & mitigation playbook
Vendor / applianceDetect
Inventory every netgear wnr2000 firmware deployment and check each version against the affected-products list above.
Fix
Apply the netgear wnr2000 firmware security patch or hotfix for CVE-2017-6862 on the affected version, following the vendor advisory for your exact build.
Workarounds
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-2017-6862 being exploited in your environment?
Detect and block the exploit chain at execution, on systems you cannot patch yet.