Broadcom WiFi vulnerability from 2010, incompletely patched in 2018, enables unauthenticated remote code execution on millions of routers across Belgium ISPs; affects eCos and Linux platforms, no CVE assigned despite known since 2018.

One Parser, Two Bugs, Many Routers: Exploiting Broadcom WiFi Across eCos and Linux

Photo by Hasan Almasi on unsplash This post is the long-form version of the talk I gave at Hexacon in Paris on October 16th, 2026. A vulnerability affecting Broadcom’s proprietary implementation of 802.11 has been present in their SDK since at least 2010. An incomplete patch was silently released in 2018, followed by Broadcom’s recommendation to move to hostapd instead, making it a definitive forever day on eCos-based platforms (BCM3380, BCM3383, BCM33834) and a potential forever day on Linux pl...