Pierluigi Paganini January 26, 2016

Security experts at Core Security’s CoreLabs have discovered a hard-coded password and other vulnerabilities in the Lenovo SHAREit File-Sharing App.

Lenovo today has patched several security issues related to the presence of a hard-coded password the file-sharing application Lenovo ShareIT application for Android and Windows that is available for free. The application was designed by Lenovo to allow users to share files over Wi-Fi between PCs and mobile devices.

The vulnerabilities were discovered by a group of researchers at Core Security’s CoreLabs.

“SHAREit is a free application from Lenovo that lets you easily share files and folders among smartphones, tablets, and personal computers. Lenovo SHAREit for Windows and Android are prone to multiple vulnerabilities which could result in integrity corruption, information leak and security bypasses.” states the vulnerability description published by Core Security.  

According to the security advisory published by , the vulnerable packages are Lenovo SHAREit for Android 3.0.18_ww and Lenovo SHAREit for Windows 2.5.1.1.

One of the flaws is particularly disconcerting, it is the hard-coded password (CVE-2016-1491) stored in the Lenovo SHAREit for Windows 2.5.1.1. The experts explained that every time the app needs to receive files from devices, it sets up a Wi-Fi hotspot that uses the 12345678 password. Ops, the experts at Lenovo have used a very simple password and hard-coded it in their software.

“When Lenovo SHAREit for Windows is configured to receive files, a Wifi HotSpot is set with an easy password (12345678). Any system with a Wifi Network card could connect to that Hotspot by using that password. The password is always the same.” states the advisory.

Lenovo has released a security update for the app that removes that default password, but that is affected by another vulnerability (CVE-2016-1490) that could allow attackers to remotely browse a device’s file system.

“When the WiFi network is on and connected with the default password (12345678), the files can be browsed but not downloaded by performing an HTTP Request to the WebServer launched by Lenovo SHAREit.”

Unfortunately, the experts discovered other issues, including file transfer in plain text in both Windows and Android version of Lenovo SHAREit and an open WiFi Network defined on Android devices.

Give a look to the security advisory published by Core Security.

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Lenovo SHAREit, cyber security)