CVE-2023–40000: How Safe Is Your Internet Box? ️

Imagine a city where all the doors have a special type of lock. Now, imagine someone finds a secret way to open all those locks without a key. This is similar to what happened with Cisco devices — the ‘locks’ on these devices had a flaw, which we call a vulnerability. This particular one is known as CVE-2023–20198, but it’s also referred to as CVE-2023–40000. It’s like a hidden trick that allows bad guys, we can call them hackers, to sneak in and become bosses of the system without being invited.

Why is this important? Well, these devices help direct traffic on the internet — kind of like traffic lights and signs on roads. If someone can control these devices, they can control where the data goes, see the information, or even cause traffic jams. It’s serious because these devices are supposed to be very secure, and over 40,000 of them are in trouble because of this trick.

The problem started with something called an “HTTP Server feature,” which is like a doorbell to the device — it’s how the device talks to the outside world. But this doorbell had a flaw, and now the advice is to turn this feature off, especially if the device is facing the big, wide internet where all the hackers are.

Most of these devices are in the United States, but it’s a worldwide issue with reports coming from the Philippines, Latin America, India, Thailand, Singapore, and Australia too. Experts are on a digital hunt to find all the devices that might be affected to fix them before more bad guys find out about this sneaky trick.

Now, let’s dive a bit deeper.

Inside these devices is a complex set of instructions that tell them how to handle the data they’re sent. Think of it as a recipe that the device follows to cook up the internet pages you want to see. This vulnerability, or secret trick, lets hackers write their own recipe and tell the device what to do. It’s like someone sneaking into your…