QNAP Escalation Vulnerability Let Attackers Gain Administrator Privileges and Inject Malicious Code

QNAP, the maker of network-attached storage (NAS) appliances, has recently released a warning statement that its products might be vulnerable to recent Linux vulnerabilities that could be exploited to gain access to the affected systems.

The vulnerability has been tracked as CVE-2022-0847, and this security flaw is a high severity flaw. Due to this critical vulnerability, several QNAP products are affected, and here they are:-

• All QNAP x86-based NAS
• Some QNAP ARM-based NAS running QTS 5.0.x and QuTS hero h5.0.x

Here is what the company stated:-

“A local privilege escalation vulnerability, also known as “dirty pipe,” has been reported to affect the Linux kernel on QNAP NAS running QTS 5.0.x and QuTS hero h5.0.x. If exploited, this vulnerability allows an unprivileged user to gain administrator privileges and inject malicious code.”

Flaw Profile

• CVE identifier: CVE-2022-0847
• Summary: Local Privilege Escalation Vulnerability in Linux (Dirty Pipe)
• Security ID: QSA-22-05
• Severity: High
• CVSS score: 7.8
• Release date: March 14, 2022
• Not affected products: QNAP NAS running QTS 4.x
• Status: Under investigation

By exploiting this vulnerability, an attacker could be able to overwrite arbitrary data into read-only files in the Linux kernel and access all the vulnerable systems.

As of February 23, 2022, three days after this flaw was reported to the Linux kernel security team, the problem has been fixed in the following Linux versions:-

• Linux version 5.16.11
• Linux version 5.15.25
• Linux version 5.10.102

While if we talk about the security recommendations, then at this moment, there is no fix or mitigation is available for this security flaw. The cybersecurity experts of QNAP have recommended users stay tuned for security updates.

QNAP has asserted that they are closely and actively working with their security experts to publish the security updates as soon as possible.

Apart from this, as soon as possible, QNAP will release a security update and provide further information about the vulnerability since they are thoroughly investigating the vulnerability.

You can follow us on Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook for daily Cybersecurity and hacking news updates.