This vulnerability allows network-adjacent attackers to disclose sensitive information on affected installations of TP-Link TL-WR841N routers. Authentication is not required to exploit this vulnerability. The specific flaw exists within the httpd service, which listens on TCP port 80 by default. The issue results from improper authentication. An attacker can leverage this vulnerability to disclose stored credentials, leading to further compromise.

TP-Link routers, Archer C5 and WR710N-V1, using the latest software, the strcmp function used for checking credentials in httpd, is susceptible to a side-channel attack. By measuring the response time of the httpd process, an attacker could guess each byte of the username and password.

In TP-Link routers, Archer C5 and WR710N-V1, running the latest available code, when receiving HTTP Basic Authentication the httpd service can be sent a crafted packet that causes a heap overflow. This can result in either a DoS (by crashing the httpd process) or an arbitrary code execution.