Hurry up, disable AFP on your QNAP NAS until the vendor fixes 8 bugs

QNAP urges customers to disable the AFP file service protocol on their NAS devices until it fixes critical Netatalk flaws.

Taiwanese vendor QNAP is warning customers to disable the AFP file service protocol on their network-attached storage (NAS) deviced until it fixes several critical Netatalk vulnerabilities.

Netatalk is a free, open-source implementation of the Apple Filing Protocol that allows Unix-like operating systems to serve as a file server for macOS computers. QNAP NAS devices supports the AFP protocol to enable macOS users to access data on the NAS.

“Upon the latest release of Netatalk 3.1.13, the Netatalk development team disclosed multiple fixed vulnerabilities affecting earlier versions of the software: CVE-2021-31439, CVE-2021-31439, CVE-2022-23121, CVE-2022-23123, CVE-2022-23122, CVE-2022-23125, CVE-2022-23124, and CVE-2022-0194.” reads the advisory published by the vendor. “To mitigate these vulnerabilities, disable AFP. We recommend users to check back and install security updates as soon as they become available”

The Netatalk maintainers released version 3.1.13 to fix these flaws on March 22.

The vulnerabilities affect the following operating system versions:

QTS 5.0.x and laterQTS 4.5.4 and laterQTS 4.3.6 and laterQTS 4.3.4 and laterQTS 4.3.3 and laterQTS 4.2.6 and laterQuTS hero h5.0.x and laterQuTS hero h4.5.4 and laterQuTScloud c5.0.x

The company has announced it has already addressed the vulnerabilities in QTS 4.5.4.2012 build 20220419 and later.

Administrators can disable AFP on their QTS or QuTS hero NAS devices through Control Panel > Network & File Services > Win/Mac/NFS/WebDAV > Apple Networking and select the Disable AFP item.

In Mid-March, the Taiwanese hardware vendor QNAP warned most of its Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices are impacted by the recently discovered Linux vulnerability ‘Dirty Pipe.’

An attacker with local access can exploit the high-severity vulnerability Dirty Pipe to gain root privileges.

The vendor has yet to fix the Dirty Pipe flaw on NAS devices running QuTScloud c5.0.x. The vendor released firmaware updates to solve critical Apache HTTP Server issues for devices running QTS, QuTS hero, and QuTScloud.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, AFP)