CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2017-9488

Use of Hard-coded Credentials

Published: Jul 31, 2017 | Modified: Apr 20, 2025
CVSS 3.x
8.8
HIGH
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.0/AV:A/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CVSS 2.x
5.8 MEDIUM
AV:A/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu

The Comcast firmware on Cisco DPC3939 (firmware version dpc3939-P20-18-v303r20421746-170221a-CMCST) and DPC3941T (firmware version DPC3941_2.5s3_PROD_sey) devices allows remote attackers to access the web UI by establishing a session to the wan0 WAN IPv6 address and then entering unspecified hardcoded credentials. This wan0 interface cannot be accessed from the public Internet.

Weakness

The product contains hard-coded credentials, such as a password or cryptographic key.

Affected Software

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Dpc3939_firmware Cisco dpc3939-p20-18-v303r20421746-170221a-cmcst (including) dpc3939-p20-18-v303r20421746-170221a-cmcst (including)

Extended Description

There are two main variations:

Potential Mitigations

  • For outbound authentication: store passwords, keys, and other credentials outside of the code in a strongly-protected, encrypted configuration file or database that is protected from access by all outsiders, including other local users on the same system. Properly protect the key (CWE-320). If you cannot use encryption to protect the file, then make sure that the permissions are as restrictive as possible [REF-7].
  • In Windows environments, the Encrypted File System (EFS) may provide some protection.
  • For inbound authentication using passwords: apply strong one-way hashes to passwords and store those hashes in a configuration file or database with appropriate access control. That way, theft of the file/database still requires the attacker to try to crack the password. When handling an incoming password during authentication, take the hash of the password and compare it to the saved hash.
  • Use randomly assigned salts for each separate hash that is generated. This increases the amount of computation that an attacker needs to conduct a brute-force attack, possibly limiting the effectiveness of the rainbow table method.
  • For front-end to back-end connections: Three solutions are possible, although none are complete.

References