14 DAY TRIAL // Apple has released a firmware update for its Time Capsule and AirPort Base Station products addressing several vulnerabilities, most of which can lead to a denial of service condition.
The new 7.5.2 firmware version addresses a total of five vulnerabilities affecting AirPort Extreme Base Station with 802.11n, AirPort Express Base Station with 802.11n and Time Capsule.
AirPort Extreme and Express Base Station are wireless networking devices which can be used for routing, media streaming or printer sharing, while Time Capsule is a network storage solution with access point capabilities.
The first vulnerability (CVE-2008-4309) consists of an integer overflow in the netsnmp_create_subtree_cache function which can be exploited to shut down the SNMP service by sending maliciously crafted SNMPv3 packets to it.
The second flaw (CVE-2009-2189) stems from the way Router Advertisement (RA) and Neighbor Discovery (ND) packets are handled and can be exploited to force a device restart.
The third security issue (CVE-2010-0039) addressed in this update is a NAT traversal issue which allows potential attackers to query services inside the LAN by sending specially crafted PORT commands to an accessible FTP in the network.
The fourth vulnerability (CVE-2009-1574) can lead to a denial of service condition for the racoon daemon when receiving malformed ISAKMP packets.
The last security bug fix in this release covers an implementation issue in the network bridge (CVE-2010-1804) that can be exploited to stop the device from accepting network traffic by sending it malicious DHCP replies.
The new firmware version can be installed through the AirPort Utility application. "It is recommended that AirPort Utility 5.5.2 be installed before upgrading to Firmware version 7.5.2," Apple notes.
The latest version of Apple Airport Utility for Mac can be downloaded from here.
The latest version of Apple Airport Utility for Windows can be downloaded from here.