CVE-2023-38906Public exploit

Information disclosure via hard-coded UDP discovery secret

Published Aug 21, 2023 · Updated Aug 2, 2024

Protection mechanism failure in TP-Link Tapo devices and app allows remote attackers on the local Wi-Fi to recover the UDP discovery secret. The discovery protocol substitutes a four-byte, hard-coded shared secret for the CRC-32 checksum field, enabling offline brute force or extraction from the app. One captured broadcast is sufficient to forge discovery traffic and, when chained with device impersonation as the app opens, disclose the Tapo account password and email hash.

CVSS severity6.5
Medium
EPSS probability0.51%
Next 30 days · Sep 16, 2026
Known exploitationUnconfirmed
Based on sourced intelligence
Hinoki checkNot available
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Summary

What happened

Protection mechanism failure in TP-Link Tapo devices and app allows remote attackers on the local Wi-Fi to recover the UDP discovery secret. The discovery protocol substitutes a four-byte, hard-coded shared secret for the CRC-32 checksum field, enabling offline brute force or extraction from the app. One captured broadcast is sufficient to forge discovery traffic and, when chained with device impersonation as the app opens, disclose the Tapo account password and email hash.

The record

CVE
CVE-2023-38906
Published
Aug 21, 2023
Updated
Aug 2, 2024
Vendor
Unknown vendor
Product
Unknown product
Classifications
T1557
Attack vector
adjacent
Privileges
unauthenticated

Timeline

How it unfolded

  1. Aug 21, 2023CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
  2. Aug 2, 2024Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.

Exploitability

Present is not the same as exploitable

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Is a vulnerable build present?

Affected buildAffected product and version details are unavailable.

What conditions does exploitation require?

Attack vectoradjacent
Required privilegesunauthenticated

What is affected?

Affected products and versions are unavailable in this record.

Published CVSS scores

6.5NIST NVDCVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

CVSS describes severity. EPSS estimates exploitation probability.

Attacks

What attackers are doing with it

Daily unique IPs observed by Shadowserver honeypots for known exploited vulnerabilities (KEVs). Missing observations do not establish an absence of attacks.

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No observations available

Sep 10, 2026Sep 16, 2026
Latest reporting daySep 16, 2026
Latest daily unique IPsUnavailable
Prior 30-day averageUnavailable
SourceShadowserver honeypots (KEV)
Vectoradjacent
Privilegesunauthenticated
Known exploitationUnconfirmed
Public exploitPublished

Weakness, pattern, technique

T1557Adversary-in-the-Middle

Public exploit references

Labels summarize the accepted research assessment. They do not indicate a test against your environment.

Technologies

Your stack

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Your stack

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