When it rains, it pours. That seems to be trend in 2013 when it comes to zero-day exploits being found in the wild. Microsoft and Oracle are just getting around to patching zero-day exploits found in Internet Explorer and Java this week, and now another major player in the consumer PC scene has been hit.
Help Net Security reports that a zero-day exploit has been found in Linksys routers that allows a hacker to gain remote root access to the device. It has the potential to be devastating to the millions of Linksys router owners around the world. The good news is that a fix is already on the way.
The original team who found the exploit, DefenseCode, alerted Cisco to the Linksys vulnerability after finding it during a product security evaluation. It took the team only 12 days to develop an exploit that could be used by hackers to take control of a person’s wireless router and hijack all the information being processed through it.
With all that being said, it doesn’t look like Linksys router owners will have to worry about anything. There’s no mention of hackers using the exploit out in the wild just yet. Cisco is also working on a fix that should be available within the next 10 days. After that, DefenseCode will release the details of the exploit to the public for further study.
You can check out the exploit in action below: