Zyxel security advisory for privilege escalation vulnerability in GS1900 series switches

Zyxel_May

CVE: CVE-2022-45853

Summary

Zyxel has released patches for GS1900 series switches affected by a privilege escalation vulnerability. Users are advised to install them for optimal protection.

What is the vulnerability?

The privilege escalation vulnerability in the Zyxel GS1900 series switches could allow a local authenticated attacker with administrator privileges to execute some system commands as the “root” user on a vulnerable device via SSH. Although SSH access is disabled by default, which would make a network immune from the attack, users are still recommended to upgrade to the latest firmware for optimal protection.

What versions are vulnerable—and what should you do?

After a thorough investigation, we’ve identified the vulnerable switches that are within their vulnerability support period and released patches to address the vulnerability, as shown in the table below.

Affected model	Affected version	Patch availability
GS1900-8	V2.70(AAHH.3)	V2.70(AAHH.5)
GS1900-8HP	V2.70(AAHI.3)	V2.70(AAHI.5)
GS1900-10HP	V2.70(AAZI.3)	V2.70(AAZI.5)
GS1900-16	V2.70(AAHJ.3)	V2.70(AAHJ.5)
GS1900-24	V2.70(AAHL.3)	V2.70(AAHL.5)
GS1900-24E	V2.70(AAHK.3)	V2.70(AAHK.5)
GS1900-24EP	V2.70(ABTO.3)	V2.70(ABTO.5)
GS1900-24HPv2	V2.70(ABTP.3)	V2.70(ABTP.5)
GS1900-48	V2.70(AAHN.3)	V2.70(AAHN.5)
GS1900-48HPv2	V2.70(ABTQ.3)	V2.70(ABTQ.5)

Got a question?

Please contact your local service rep or visit Zyxel’s Community for further information or assistance.

Acknowledgment

Thanks to Justin Aarden for reporting the issue to us.

Revision history

2023-6-6: Initial release.

mMontana

Thanks for providing this security advisory.

Why took 3 months before releasing the firmware? Release note are date 2nd of march, 2023, security advisory is dated 6th of june 2023.

Zyxel_Melen

Hi @mMontana,

The vulnerability fix was released earlier because it is ready before the firmware release schedule in March. So, we decided not to release two firmware (one in March and another in June) but only one, to not bother the customers.