Description

A vulnerability has been found in BusyBox up to 1.30.1. This vulnerability affects unknown code of the file networking/wget.c of the component FEATURE_WGET_TIMEOUT Handler. Such manipulation of the argument -T leads to null pointer dereference. Local access is required to approach this attack. The exploit has been disclosed to the public and may be used. The name of the patch is 83a40bf7a93c8ac093d33ab452222dd5b9eb57ff. A patch should be applied to remediate this issue.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "3.3",
  "pubDate": "2026-08-19T03:16:53.247Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-08-19T03:16:53.247Z",
  "executiveSummary": "A null pointer dereference vulnerability has been identified in BusyBox versions up to 1.30.1, specifically within the FEATURE_WGET_TIMEOUT handler in the networking/wget.c component.\nThe vulnerability is triggered by the manipulation of the -T argument during execution.\nSuccessful exploitation of this flaw results in a null pointer dereference, leading to application crashes and potential denial of service conditions.\nThe affected product is BusyBox up to version 1.30.1.\nRisk implications include system instability and potential service disruption where BusyBox utilities are heavily relied upon for embedded networking operations.\nAttacker capabilities require local access to the target system to approach the attack vector and supply the malicious or malformed -T argument.\nPublic disclosure of the exploit increases the likelihood of opportunistic exploitation against vulnerable deployments, making timely remediation critical.",
  "technicalDetails": "The vulnerability resides in the networking/wget.c source file of BusyBox, specifically within the code path handling the timeout functionality governed by the FEATURE_WGET_TIMEOUT configuration directive.\nThe root cause stems from insufficient validation and sanitization of the argument passed via the -T command-line switch, which specifies the network timeout value.\nWhen a specially crafted or anomalous value is supplied to the -T argument, the internal state parsing logic fails to properly initialize or verify internal pointers before dereferencing them.\nThe step-by-step attack flow begins with a local user or process executing the BusyBox wget utility with a manipulated -T argument.\nUpon parsing the invalid timeout parameter, the application attempts to access memory via a pointer that has been assigned a null value due to parsing errors or missing bounds checking.\nThis unhandled null pointer dereference immediately triggers a segmentation fault, terminating the BusyBox wget process abnormally.\nVulnerable versions include all BusyBox releases up to and including version 1.30.1.\nAuthentication requirements are minimal, though local access to the underlying system is strictly required to execute the binary with the malicious argument.\nNo specific network exposure is inherently required for the triggering mechanism since the flaw manifests locally during argument parsing, prior to or during the initiation of network operations.\nThe post-exploitation impact is generally limited to denial of service through application crashes, though further research in specific embedded contexts could theoretically evaluate process monitoring disruption."
}