Security Hacks

1543 Articles

This Week In Security: OpenWrt, ZOOM, And Systemd

April 3, 2020 by 21 Comments

OpenWrt announced a problem in opkg, their super-lightweight package manager. OpenWrt’s target hardware, routers, make for an interesting security challenge. A Linux install that fits in just 4 MB of flash memory is a minor miracle in itself, and many compromises had to be made. In this case, we’re interested in the lack of SSL: a 4 MB install just can’t include SSL support. As a result, the package manager can’t rely on HTTPS for secure downloads. Instead, opkg first downloads a pair of files: A list of packages, which contains a SHA256 of each package, and then a second file containing an Ed25519 signature. When an individual package is installed, the SHA256 hash of the downloaded package can be compared with the hash provided in the list of packages.


It’s a valid approach, but there was a bug, discovered by [Guido Vranken], in how opkg reads the hash values from the package list. The leading space triggers some questionable pointer arithmetic, and as a result, opkg believes the SHA256 hash is simply blank. Rather than fail the install, the hash verification is simply skipped. The result? Opkg is vulnerable to a rather simple man in the middle attack.

OpenWrt doesn’t do any automatic installs or automatic updates, so this vulnerability will likely not be widely abused, but it could be used for a targeted attack. An attacker would need to be in a position to MitM the router’s internet connection while software was being installed. Regardless, make sure you’re running the latest OpenWrt release to mitigate this issue. Via Ars Technica.

Wireguard V1.0

With the Linux Kernel version 5.6 being finally released, Wireguard has finally been christened as a stable release. An interesting aside, Google has enabled Wireguard in their Generic Kernel Image (GKI), which may signal more official support for Wireguard VPNs in Android. I’ve also heard reports that one of the larger Android ROM development communities is looking into better system-level Wireguard support as well.

Javascript in Disguise

Javascript makes the web work — and has been a constant thorn in the side of good security. For just an example, remember Samy, the worm that took over Myspace in ’05. That cross-site scripting (XSS) attack used a series of techniques to embed Javascript code in a user’s profile. Whenever that profile page was viewed, the embedded JS code would run, and then replicate itself on the page of whoever had the misfortune of falling into the trap.

Today we have much better protections against XSS attacks, and something like that could never happen again, right? Here’s the thing, for every mitigation like Content-Security-Policy, there is a guy like [theMiddle] who’s coming up with new ways to break it. In this case, he realized that a less-than-perfect CSP could be defeated by encoding Javascript inside a .png, and decoding it to deliver the payload.

Systemd

Ah, systemd. Nothing seems to bring passionate opinions out of the woodwork like a story about it. In this case, it’s a vulnerability found by [Tavis Ormandy] from Google Project Zero. The bug is a race condition, where a cached data structure can be called after it’s already been freed. It’s interesting, because this vulnerability is accessible using DBus, and could potentially be used to get root level access. It was fixed with systemd v220.

Mac Firmware

For those of you running MacOS on Apple hardware, you might want to check your firmware version. Not because there’s a particularly nasty vulnerability in there, but because firmware updates fail silently during OS updates. What’s worse, Apple isn’t publishing release notes, or even acknowledging the most recent firmware version. A crowd-sourced list of the latest firmware versions is available, and you can try to convince your machine to try again, and hope the firmware update works this time.

Anti-Rubber-Ducky

Google recently announced a new security tool, USB Keystroke Injection Protection. I assume the nickname, UKIP, isn’t an intentional reference to British politics. Regardless, this project is intended to help protect against the infamous USB Rubber Ducky attack, by trying to differentiate a real user’s typing cadence, as opposed to a malicious device that types implausibly quickly.

While the project is interesting, there are already examples of how to defeat it that amount to simply running the scripts with slight pauses between keystrokes. Time will tell if UKIP turns into a useful mitigation tool. (Get it?)

SMBGhost

Remember SMBGhost, the new wormable SMB flaw? Well, there is already a detailed explanation and PoC. This particular PoC is a local-only privilege escalation, but a remote code execution attack is like inevitable, so go make sure you’re patched!

Peel Apart Your ISP’s Router

April 2, 2020 by 35 Comments

Whether your home Internet connection comes by ADSL, fibre, cable, or even satellite, at some point in the chain between your ISP and your computer will be a router in your home. For some of us it’s a model we’ve bought ourselves and loaded up with a custom distro, but for the majority it’s a box supplied by our ISP and subject to their settings and restrictions. [Paddlesteamer] has just such a router, a Huawei model supplied by the Turkcell ISP, and decided to do a little snooping into its setup.

In a tale of three parts, we see the device unravel, from uncovering a shell to reverse engineering its update process, to delving in its firmware and finally removing all its restrictions entirely. It’s a fascinating process in which we learn a lot, such as the way a man-in-the-middle attack is performed on the router’s connection tot he ISP, or that it contains an authorised SSH key seemingly giving Huawei a back door into it. You may never do this with your ISP’s router, but it pays to be aware of what can be put in your home by them without your realising it.

The Golden Age of router hacking may be behind us as the likes of the Raspberry Pi have replaced surplus routers as a source of cheap Linux boards, but  as this shows us there’s still a need to dive inside a router from time to time. After all, locked-down routers are hardly a new phenomenon.

Via Hacker News.

Stay Smarter Than Your Smart Speaker

April 1, 2020 by 56 Comments

Smart speakers have always posed a risk to privacy and security — that’s just the price we pay for getting instant answers to life’s urgent and not-so-urgent questions the moment they arise. But it seems that many owners of the 76 million or so smart speakers on the active install list have yet to wake up to the reality that this particular trick of technology requires a microphone that’s always listening. Always. Listening.

With so much of the world’s workforce now working from home due to the global SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, smart speakers have suddenly become a big risk for business, too — especially those where confidential conversations are as common and crucial as coffee.

Imagine the legions of lawyers out there, suddenly thrust from behind their solid-wood doors and forced to set up ramshackle sub rosa sanctuaries in their homes to discuss private matters with their equally out-of-sorts clients. How many of them don’t realize that their smart speaker bristles with invisible thorns, and is even vulnerable to threats outside the house? Given the recent study showing that smart speakers can and do activate accidentally up to 19 times per day, the prevalence of the consumer-constructed surveillance state looms like a huge crisis of confidentiality.

So what are the best practices of confidential work in earshot of these audio-triggered gadgets?

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SOLID Promises A New Approach To How The Web Works

March 30, 2020 by 71 Comments

As it stands on the modern Internet, your data is no longer your own. Your emails, photos, and posts all live on servers owned by large corporations. Their policies give them access to your data, which is mined to generate advertising revenue. And if you want your data back, there are innumerable hoops to jump through. Want it deleted entirely? Good luck.

Tim Berners-Lee, original creator of the World Wide Web, is behind the project.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, as the original creator of what became the Web, has drawn issue with the current state of play. To move the ball on the issue, he’s been working on a design for decentralized internet and the efforts have led to the establishment of the Solid project. The goal is to rectify online privacy and ownership issues and give users greater control over their personal data.

The big question is how do you do that? When SOLID was announced last year there were few if any details on the approach taken by the program. But since then, more details have surface and you can even take an early version of the program for a spin. Let’s take a look.

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This Week In Security: 0-Days, Pwn2Own, IOS And Tesla

March 27, 2020 by 4 Comments

LILIN DVRs and cameras are being actively exploited by a surprisingly sophisticated botnet campaign. There are three separate 0-day vulnerabilities being exploited in an ongoing campaigns. If you have a device built by LILIN, go check for firmware updates, and if your device is exposed to the internet, entertain the possibility that it was compromised.

The vulnerabilities include a hardcoded username/password, command injection in the FTP and NTP server fields, and an arbitrary file read vulnerability. Just the first vulnerability is enough to convince me to avoid black-box DVRs, and keep my IP cameras segregated from the wider internet.

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Launch Console Delivers Enjoyment To Software Deployment

March 26, 2020 by 3 Comments

Sometimes it feels as though all the good physical interactions with machines have disappeared. Given our current germ warfare situation, that is probably a good thing. But if fewer than ten people ever will be touching something, it’s probably okay to have a little fun and make your own interfaces for things.

Fun definitely seems to be some of the inspiration behind [sethvoltz]’s retro-style launch console. This two-factor authorization token-based system is responsible for an important task that usually receives no fanfare — deploying code to production.

The console is centered around a Yubikey, which is type of hardware dongle for 2FA. Flipping the guarded toggle switch will initiate the launch sequence, and then it’s time to insert the Yubikey into the 3D-printed lock cylinder and wait for authorization. If the Raspberry Pi decides all systems are go, then the key can be turned ninety degrees and the mushroom button mashed. You have our permission to peek at the declassified demo after the break. Stick around for a CAD view inside the lock cylinder.

Console culture was great, but the old full-size cabinets sure took up a lot of space. If you’re more of a hardware person, check out this mini-console for testing multiple servos.

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This Week In Security: Working From Home Edition

March 20, 2020 by 8 Comments

As the world sits back and waits for Coronavirus to pass, the normally frantic pace of security news has slowed just a bit. Google is not exempt, and Chrome 81 has been delayed as a result. Major updates to Chrome and Chrome OS are paused indefinitely, but security updates will continue as normal. In fact, Google has verified that the security related updates will be packaged as minor updates to Chrome 80.

Chinese Viruses Masquerading as Chinese Viruses

Speaking of COVID-19, researchers at Check Point Research stumbled upon a malware campaign that takes advantage of the current health scare. A pair of malicious RTF documents were being sent to various Mongolian targets. Created with a tool called “Royal Road“, these files target a set of older Microsoft Word vulnerabilities.

This particular attack drops its payload in the Microsoft Word startup folder, waiting for the next time Word is launched to run the next stage. This is a clever strategy, as it would temporarily deflect attention from the malicious files. The final payload is a custom RAT (Remote Access Trojan) that can take screenshots, upload and download files, etc.

While the standard disclaimer about the difficulty of attribution does apply, this particular attack seems to be originating from Chinese intelligence agencies. While the Coronavirus angle is new, this campaign seems to stretch back to 2017.
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