As Synology explains in security advisories published two days after the flaws were demoed at Pwn2Own Ireland 2024 to hijack a Synology BeeStation BST150-4T device, the security flaws enable remote attackers to gain remote code execution as root on vulnerable NAS appliances exposed online.
"The vulnerability was initially discovered, within just a few hours, as a replacement for another Pwn2Own submission. The issue was disclosed to Synology immediately after demonstration, and within 48 hours a patch was made available which resolves the vulnerability," Midnight Blue said.
From a different source:
Synology proactively sponsors and works with security researchers as part of product security initiatives. At this year's Pwn2Own Ireland 2024 event, which took place in late October, we successfully discovered and resolved multiple security vulnerabilities.
While these vulnerabilities are not being exploited, we recommend all Synology device administrators immediately take action to secure their systems by updating due to the scope and severity of specific issues.
FYI, in case anyone is running 7.2.1, just be aware that you have to MANUALLY update because you need to agree to new terms that removes local hardware processing of some media types.
7.2.2-72806 Update 1 is the update with the new patches.
If you're running Plex locally (i.e. - not in docker) you'll need to manually install the updated 7.2.2 patch. You need to download it locally, then push it back up to your NAS bypassing the normal process. You can't use the plex client to prompt the update, and you can't use the synology package manager to update.
So they’ve just decided that all devices now support HEVC (H.265) and they’ll just disable transcoding? My media centre is on a Pi 3B and that can’t play h265 smoothly. If I had a Synology I’d be pretty annoyed!
I updated to 7.2.2 this morning and it prompted me to update Plex and then gave a message about what to do if Plex couldn't see my library. It seems to be ok.
Was it that the talk was a last minute change (replacing another scheduled talk) so the responsible disclosure was made in a rush without giving synology more time to provide the patch before the talk was presented?
If so, who decided it was a good idea to present something regarding a vulnerability without the fix being available yet?
There's a give-and-take here, where disclosing the vulnerable should be done soon enough to be responsible to affected users, but not so late that it's seen as pandering to the vendor.
We've already seen how much vendors drag their feet when they are given time to fix a vuln before the disclosure, and almost all the major vendors have tried to pull this move where they keep delaying fix unless it becomes public.
Synology hasn't been very reactive to fixing CVEs unless they're very public. One nasty vulnerability in the old DSM 6 was found at a hackathon by a researcher (I'll edit and post the number later), but the fix wasn't included in the main update stream, you had to go get the patch manually and apply it.
Vendors must have their feet held to the fire on vulns, or they don't bother doing anything.
I hear you, but how much time was Synology given? If it was no time at all (which it seems is what happened here??), that does not even give Synology a chance and that's what I'm concerned with. If they get a month (give or take), then sure, disclose it and too bad for them if they don't have a fix, they should have taken it more seriously, but I'm wondering about how much time they were even given in this case.
The vulnerability was discovered during a pwn2own competition. The competition was endorsed and probably sponsored by Synology. Not sure what the problem is?
You could move to a high availability model but that is a pain and has lots of tradeoffs.
The device will go offline at some point. It is good to have some sort of plan of how to efficiently power it down without causing major problems. Maybe some automation to push stuff to a second NAS or something.
This was one of the rare times I installed a firmware update without waiting. They even sent an email telling me how urgent it was to get my NAS patched.
To that note, anyone have any idea how to get Hyper Backup to stop telling me that my backups are "partial" because Video Station is no longer found? It's not even on the list of apps, but tells me that it's been disabled as an option to back up because it's not available. Annoying!
If someone knows how to apply security updates to ancient NAS from the brand I'm interested. Sadly mine is out of the loop, I guess I'll have to harden it like hell then
EDIT : security updates popped up on my old 415+ running DS 7.1.1. after a few days, happy to still get an update for my old device 🎉
Don't make it available from internet. This will solve the issue.
If it is not possible, once the cve is published and properly described, perhaps there is another way to secure it via an external proxy or even a waf.
If you have unsupported Sw, it is always a pain in the ass to keep them secure so try to figure out always the first point