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HiveOS: System Vulnerabilities and Their Mitigation

Recently, cybersecurity specialists have discovered three critical vulnerabilities in Extreme Networks’ IQ Engine (HiveOS) operating system. These vulnerabilities allow authenticated attackers to escalate privileges, decrypt passwords, and execute arbitrary commands.

The vulnerabilities are classified as follows:

  • CVE-2025-27229 – Gaining root privileges via improper sanitization of SSH tunnels.
  • CVE-2025-27228 – Decrypting passwords due to a flawed encryption algorithm.
  • CVE-2025-27227 – Executing commands through an SSID configuration vulnerability.

Extreme Networks has released an updated software version, 10.7r5, to address these vulnerabilities.

Details of the Vulnerabilities

1. CVE-2025-27229 – Gaining Root Privileges via SSH

In HiveOS versions prior to 10.7r5, SSH tunnel configurations were not properly validated. As a result, attackers with system access could manipulate SSH parameters to inject malicious commands via the sshd service, ultimately gaining root privileges.

This exploit is caused by unsafe handling of environment variables (e.g., PermitRootLogin and AllowTcpForwarding) in the tunnel.c module.

2. CVE-2025-27228 – Password Decryption

HiveOS’s command-line interface (CLI) stores user passwords using a deterministic encryption algorithm. Due to this flaw, authenticated attackers can use the following command to decrypt stored passwords:

arduinoКопироватьРедактироватьshow running-config | decrypt -iv 0x3F7A

Although passwords are encrypted using AES-256-CBC, the use of a static IV makes them vulnerable to GPU-based cracking, allowing decryption in approximately 90 seconds.

3. CVE-2025-27227 – Command Execution via SSID Configuration

Due to improper sanitization of SSID configurations in HiveOS, attackers can embed newline characters (\n) within SSID names to execute commands on the system. For example, creating the following SSID:

bashКопироватьРедактироватьMalicious_SSID\n/bin/bash -c ‘rm -rf /’

would cause the system to execute the command, leading to file deletion or execution of malicious code.

This vulnerability arises from the lack of input sanitization in the parse_ssid() function, specifically due to the unsafe use of scanf().

The Impact of These Vulnerabilities

These three vulnerabilities collectively pose a serious threat to enterprise networks. Specifically:

✅ CVE-2025-27228 allows attackers to decrypt administrator passwords.
✅ CVE-2025-27229 enables attackers to escalate privileges to root.
✅ CVE-2025-27227 makes it possible to install a backdoor in the system.

Exploiting these vulnerabilities requires only basic Python and Linux utilities. Attackers can leverage tools like paramiko (a Python SSH library) to facilitate their attacks.

Affected devices include Extreme Networks AP4000 IoT devices and wireless controllers.

Security Fixes in HiveOS 10.7r5

Extreme Networks has addressed these vulnerabilities in version 10.7r5 through the following measures:

🔹 CVE-2025-27229 – SSH arguments are now sanitized using regex filtering (^[a-zA-Z0-9_=-]+$).
🔹 CVE-2025-27228 – Passwords are now protected with Argon2id, and PBKDF2 hashing is implemented with 100,000 iterations.
🔹 CVE-2025-27227 – SSID input lengths are now restricted using strnlen() and strlcpy().

Recommended Security Measures

1️⃣ Update the System

  • Install HiveOS version 10.7r5 to patch these vulnerabilities.
  • If the device has reached EOL (End-of-Life) status, consider upgrading to newer hardware.

2️⃣ Secure SSH Configurations

  • Review SSH port configurations and monitor traffic.
  • Ensure that root login is disabled.

3️⃣ Monitor Command-Line Activity

  • Analyze CLI activity logs, especially for password decryption attempts.

4️⃣ Strengthen Network Security

  • Implement network segmentation to prevent lateral movement.
  • Use IDS/IPS security systems to detect anomalies.

Conclusion

The CVE-2025-27229, CVE-2025-27228, and CVE-2025-27227 vulnerabilities in HiveOS could serve as powerful tools for cybercriminals. Exploiting these weaknesses could grant attackers full control over corporate networks.

Extreme Networks’ HiveOS 10.7r5 update effectively mitigates these threats. Therefore, all HiveOS users must update their systems as soon as possible!

Cybersecurity is not just about technical fixes—it requires continuous monitoring and proactive security measures. Don’t delay securing your systems!