CVE-2026-89020 MikroTik RouterOS Stack Buffer Overflow via TFTP URL Path Leading to Privilege Escalation
Description
MikroTik RouterOS before 7.23.4 (long-term) and 7.24.2 (stable) contains a stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability in the mtget binary's TFTP RRQ builder function that allows authenticated users to crash the mtget worker process by supplying a URL path of 507 bytes or more to the /tool fetch command; the first write outside the 528-byte buffer occurs at 505 bytes. Attackers can trigger the overflow by issuing a fetch command with a crafted tftp:// URL path, which causes an unbounded rep movsb instruction to overwrite saved registers at a deterministic offset, crashing the process without requiring a reachable TFTP server or elevated privileges beyond read-only group membership. On older RouterOS versions, this overflow is not limited to crashing the process: the deterministic overwrite of saved registers is exploitable to achieve persistent privilege escalation on the device. On versions with intact exploit mitigations, the impact is limited to a crash of the mtget worker process.
CVSS 4.0 detail
Vector CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:NExploitable remotely over the network, with an ordinary account and without any user action; an attacker can seriously compromise confidentiality, integrity or availability.
- Attack vector
- Network
- Attack complexity
- Low
- Attack requirements
- None
- Privileges required
- Low
- Interaction
- None
- Confidentiality
- High
- Integrity
- High
- Availability
- High
- Confidentiality of other systems
- None
- Integrity of other systems
- None
- Availability of other systems
- None