Search Results for "home router"

NetUSB, IoT and Supply Chain Risk

If you want an object lesson in the dangers that await us on the Internet of Things, check out SEC Consult’s write up on NetUSB, a widely used technology developed by an obscure Taiwanese company that just happens to contain a nasty, remotely exploitable vulnerability. According to this alert, published on Tuesday, NetUSB “suffers from a remotely exploitable kernel stack buffer overflow” that could be used to run malicious code on affected devices. Even worse: the NetUSB component is ubiquitous – found in a long list of devices, from low-end wireless access points and broadband routers for small office and home office deployments to what SEC Consult called “high end devices…released very recently.” Networking devices from 26 vendors, including TP-Link, NetGear and others were found to use the NetUSB technology in their products. The vulnerability discovered by SEC Consult is straight-forward enough. According to their advisory, the NetUSB code does an inadequate […]

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Please Apply Our 10 Year-Old Patch: The Dismal State of Embedded Device Security

On Friday, the firm Allegro Software of Boxborough, Massachusetts, released an odd-sounding statement encouraging all its customers to “maintain firmware for highest level of embedded device security.” Specifically, Allegro wanted to warn customers about the need to apply a software update to address two recently discovered vulnerabilities affecting its Rom Pager embedded web server: CVE-2014-9222 and CVE-2014-9223, collectively known as the “Misfortune Cookie” vulnerabilities. That patch in question was released almost ten years ago – in 2005. As reported widely last week, the vulnerabilities affecting the Rom Pager software can be found in some 12 million broadband routers by manufacturers including Linksys, D-Link, Huawei, TP-Link, ZTE and Edimax. In short: some of the most common sellers of broadband routers in the world. The security firm CheckPoint discovered the vulnerabilities and issued a report about them. (The report web site is here and a PDF format report is here.) According to CheckPoint, the Misfortune Cookie vulnerability has to […]

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Report: Hell is Unpatched Systems

One of the ‘subplots’ of the Internet of Things revolution concerns embedded devices. Specifically: the tendency of embedded devices to be either loosely managed or – in some cases – unmanageable.   The future holds the promise of more, not fewer of these. That’s the gist of a piece I wrote for InfoWorld, and that you can read here. In short: we’re already seeing the beginning of a shift on the threat landscape. While attacks against traditional endpoints (like Windows desktops, laptops and servers) are still the norm, there are more stories each day about cyber criminal groups and malicious actors who are compromising non-standard endpoints like home wifi routers.  In March, for example, the security consultancy Team Cymru identified a botnet consisting of some 300,000 compromised home routers and other in-home devices. The virus called “TheMoon” was also identified spreading between vulnerable home routers and other embedded devices. The […]

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Dan Geer Keynote: Security of Things Forum

The following is a transcript of a speech given by Dr. Dan Geer at the Security of Things Forum on May 7, 2014. The Forum was held at The Sheraton Commander in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The official copy of Dr. Geer’s speech lives on his web site, and can be found here. .Security of Things .Dan Geer, 7 May 14, Cambridge Thank you for your invitation and to the other speakers for their viewpoints and for the shared experience. With respect to this elephant, each of us is one of those twelve blind men. We are at the knee of the curve for deployment of a different model of computation. We’ve had two decades where, in round numbers, laboratories gave us twice the computing for constant dollars every 18 months, twice the disk drive storage capacity for constant dollars every 12 months, and twice the network speed for constant dollars every […]

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Linux IoT Worm Still Alive And Mining Virtual Coins

A few months ago we wrote about a new Internet worm notable because it spread between devices running the Linux operating systems, and because it had the ability to infect a range of non-PC devices including set top boxes. Symantec was quick to suggest that the worm, Linux.Darlloz, was the first “Internet of Things” malware. Now, three months later, Symantec is updating the story: noting that Darlloz is still out there, and seems to have  been put to use mining for virtual currencies. Writing on Symantec’s blog on Thursday, analyst Karou Hayashi said that researchers there discovered a new variant of Darlloz in January that included code changes and improvements from the version discovered at the end of 2013. Darlloz is versatile: it can run on devices using a variety of architectures, including the common Intel x86, but also hardware running the ARM, MIPS and PowerPC architectures. Those are more common […]

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