In light of increased and more sophisticated threats in the cybersecurity landscape, tech giants have vowed to get more serious about protecting their customers by working together through a new Cybersecurity Tech Accord. Thirty-four companies—including Microsoft, Oracle, HP, Facebook, Cisco, Nokia TrendMicro and others—have signed on to the accord, which was unveiled Tuesday at the RSA Conference taking place in San Francisco this week. Those signing on said it’s the largest-ever group to agree to band together in the fight against malicious attacks from cybercriminals and nation-states. Speaking at the conference at the unveiling of the accord, Microsoft’s President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith told attendees that the recent WannaCry and NotPetya malware attacks were a sign that cybersecurity events were taking a turn for the worse. “We need to get the governments of the world to stop targeting tech companies, stop targeting the electrical grid, the private sector, hospitals,” […]
HP
Micro Survey of Smart Home Devices Finds Much To Fault
Larry Dignan over at ZDNet is writing about a new survey by HP’s Fortify application security division that finds 70 percent of Internet of things devices have exploitable software vulnerabilities. Some caveats: HP makes its conclusions based on scans of “10 of the most popular Internet of things devices.” That’s a very small sample size that could (greatly) skew the results one way or the other. So take this with a grain of salt. You can download the full survey here. (PDF) [Read Security Ledger coverage of Internet of Things here.] According to Dignan, HP found 25 vulnerabilities per device. Audited devices included TVs, Webcams, thermostats, remote power outlets, sprinklers, door locks, home alarms, scales and garage openers. One of each, from the sound of it. The findings, assessed based on the OWASP Internet of Things Top 10 list and vulnerability categories, account for the devices as well as cloud and […]
Update: Another IPMI Mishap? Researcher Claims Supermicro Devices Vulnerable
There’s more bad news for companies that rely on the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) to manage servers and other hardware in their IT environments. Specifically: researcher Zachary Wikholm over at Cari.net has published evidence of what he says is a head-slapping vulnerability affecting devices that use IPMI Base Management Controllers (BMCs) made by the firm SuperMicro. According to Wikholm, servers equipped with Supermicro BMCs store a password file, PSBlock, in plain text and – making matters worse- leave it open to the world on port 49152. “You can quite literally download the BMC password file from any UPnP enabled Supermicro motherboard running IPMI on a public interface,” he wrote. Baseboard Management Controllers (BMCs) are small, embedded systems attached to a system’s motherboard that manage IPMI communications. Wikholm says that Supermicro has fixed the problem in the latest version of its IPMI firmware. However, companies are often reluctant to flash […]
IPMI’s Inconvenient Truth: A Conversation With Dan Farmer
The work of brilliant computer security researchers often borders on a kind of madness. After all, it takes dedication and a certain amount of monomania to dig through the mush of disassembled source code or the output of application fuzzers and find the one software vulnerabilities – or chain of vulnerabilities – that might lead to a successful attack. Often, this work puts you at odds with what most of us consider “the real world.” Notably: the well-respected researcher Dragos Ruiu had many in the security community wondering about his sanity after he sounded the alarm about a super stealthy piece of BIOS malware he dubbed “BadBIOS” that seemed to be everywhere and nowhere, all at once. Dan Farmer finds himself in a similar position as he continues to sound alarms about the security threat posed by insecure implementations of the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI)– a ubiquitous protocol used to do remote […]
IPMI Insecurity Affects 200k Systems
It has been almost a year since security researcher Dan Farmer first warned of the danger posed by Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) – a ubiquitous protocol used to do remote management of servers. According to a new report, however, that warning went unheeded. Writing last week (PDF), Farmer said that a world-wide scan for systems using the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) protocol identified over 230,000 Baseboard Management Controllers (BMCs) exposed to the Internet. As many as 90% of the exposed systems could be compromised by exploiting what Farmer characterized as “basic configuration and protocol weaknesses.” Even more worrying, the 230,000 systems that are Internet accessible are probably just a fraction of all the vulnerable systems that might be attacked, with many deployed on (hackable) corporate and private networks. Farmer is reiterating calls for public and private sector organizations to wake up to the dangers posed by IPMI. Hackers who are able to compromise Baseboard Management […]
