FragAttacks: Affecting Millions of Wi-Fi Enabled Devices

What has been discovered?

• If the attackers are at the radio range of the vulnerable WiFi-enabled devices, they could take over the device and intercept an owner’s information as it triggers malicious code.
• The researcher performed experiments on more than 75 devices, with every one of them vulnerable to at least one of the discovered attacks, signifying that every device is impacted.
• The vulnerabilities discovered in the design of WiFi standards are tracked as CVE-2020-24588, CVE-2020-24587, and CVE-2020-24586.
• In addition, another chunk of vulnerabilities were discovered in the way Wi-Fi standards are implemented, called implementation flaws.

Many ways to exploit bugs

• The implementation flaws (CVE-2020-26145 and CVE-2020-26144, among others) can be exploited by injecting frames into a protected WiFi network. In particular, an attacker can inject an unencrypted WiFi frame with a specially crafted frame.
• These vulnerabilities are linked to the process where WiFi standard breaks and reassembles network packets, which could allow attackers to steal data by injecting malicious code during the operation.
• Further, the flaws can be abused to compromise routers by bypassing the NAT or firewall, allowing the attackers to target vulnerable devices’ in the local WiFi network.

Conclusion