Crucial MX500 SSD firmware susceptible to buffer overflow security vulnerability
A security vulnerability has been discovered in Crucial's MX500 SSDs, enabling data leakage that could potentially expose sensitive data. A user on the TechPowerUp forums discovered that the MX500 is vulnerable to buffer overflow, which causes this data leakage to occur.
This security vulnerability is dangerous because an attacker can trigger buffer overflow manually through specially crafted ATA packets from the host to the drive controller, as NIST explains. In technical terms, a buffer overflow is a software error that occurs when a program attempts to write more data to a memory buffer than what the buffer can physically hold. This reaction causes the program to overwrite adjacent memory buffers, erasing and replacing existing data with new data.
As Fortinet explains, extra data added to the adjacent memory buffer can hold malicious code that an attacker who put it there intentionally can exploit. Buffer overflow exploits can enable an attacker to gain full control over the machine and/or program they are attacking.
