Detecting vulnerabilities in BitTorrent applications allows hackers to control user computers

A serious flaw in the BitTorrent application of Transmission was discovered by Tavis Ormandy, a leading security expert at Google. If successfully exploited, hackers can take full control of computers running Linux or Windows.

The Ormandy said hackers could exploit the vulnerability (CVE-2018-5702) to take full control of the application through the website.

Ormandy published the document to explain how the vulnerability works on Chrome and Firefox browsers on computers with Linux or Windows operating systems. This security expert also warns that if users of other platforms such as macOS enable remote access, it is also likely to be affected by this vulnerability.

Some users use a torrent downloader without a password, so hackers can use the domain recovery method to attack a device and control it remotely.

In addition, hackers can take advantage of the vulnerability to change the torent's downloaded file directory and run any command when the application finishes downloading a file.

According to Ormandy, this is one of the first vulnerabilities that allows remote code execution to affect the popular torrent download program.

Ormandy and his team Google's Project Zero reported to Transmission about this serious vulnerability with a patch on November 30, 2017, but so far the company has not responded. Therefore, the security experts group had to publicly disclose their findings.

Your device is in danger of being attacked if you use Torrents to download files from the internet. Therefore, you need to immediately turn off the remote access feature.

You can visit the following link to find out more details about the vulnerability in the BitTorrent application of Transmission.

To fix this, users need to update the security patch immediately when there is information from the provider as well as turn off the feature to allow remote access. While waiting for an update, users should remove or restrict the use of BitTorrent to download the file.

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