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This Week In Security: Zombieload, And Is Your Router Leaking?

May 28, 2019 by 8 Comments

Do you know what your router is doing? We have two stories of the embedded devices misbehaving. First, Linksys “Smart” routers keep track of every device that connects to its network. Right, so does every other router. These routers, however, also helpfully expose that stored data over JNAP/HNAP.

Some background is needed here. First, HNAP is the Home Network Administration Protocol, designed to manage routers and network devices. Originally designed by Pure Networks, HNAP is a SOAP based protocol, and has been part of security problems in the past. You may also see the term JNAP. It seems that JNAP is the JSON Network Administration Protocol, identical to HNAP except for using JSON instead of SOAP.

The odd part is that this is an old problem. CVE-2014-8244 was disclosed and fixed in 2014. According to the writeup at Badpackets.net, the problem was re-discovered as a result of observing active network attacks targeting JNAP. When Linksys was informed of the rediscovered problem, they responded that the problem was fixed in 2014, and devices with updated firmware and default settings are not accessible from the public internet. The presence of over 20,000 devices leaking data casts doubt on their response. Continue reading “This Week In Security: Zombieload, And Is Your Router Leaking?” →

This Week In Security: What’s Up With Whatsapp, Windows XP Patches, And Cisco Is Attacked By The Thrangrycat

May 21, 2019 by 21 Comments

Whatsapp allows for end-to-end encrypted messaging, secure VoIP calls, and until this week, malware installation when receiving a call. A maliciously crafted SRTCP connection can trigger a buffer overflow, and execute code on the target device. The vulnerability was apparently found first by a surveillance company, The NSO Group. NSO is known for Pegasus, a commercial spyware program that they’ve marketed to governments and intelligence agencies, and which has been implicated in a number of human rights violations and even the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi. It seems that this Whatsapp vulnerability was one of the infection vectors used by the Pegasus program. After independently discovering the flaw, Facebook pushed a fixed client on Monday.

Windows XP Patched Against Wormable Vulnerability

What year is it!? This Tuesday, Microsoft released a patch for Windows XP, five years after support for the venerable OS officially ended. Reminiscent of the last time Microsoft patched Windows XP, when Wannacry was the crisis. This week, Microsoft patched a Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) vulnerability, CVE-2019-0708. The vulnerability allows an attacker to connect to the RDP service, send a malicious request, and have control over the system. Since no authentication is required, the vulnerability is considered “wormable”, or exploitable by a self-replicating program.

Windows XP through Windows 7 has the flaw, and fixes were rolled out, though notably not for Windows Vista. It’s been reported that it’s possible to download the patch for Server 2008 and manually apply it to Windows Vista. That said, it’s high time to retire the unsupported systems, or at least disconnect them from the network.

The Worst Vulnerability Name of All Time

Thrangrycat. Or more accurately, “😾😾😾” is a newly announced vulnerability in Cisco products, discovered by Red Balloon Security. Cisco uses secure boot on many of their devices in order to prevent malicious tampering with device firmware. Secure boot is achieved through the use of a secondary processor, a Trust Anchor module (TAm). This module ensures that the rest of the system is running properly signed firmware. The only problem with this scheme is that the dedicated TAm also has firmware, and that firmware can be attacked. The TAm processor is actually an FPGA, and researchers discovered that it was possible to modify the FPGA bitstream, totally defeating the secure boot mechanism.

The name of the attack, thrangrycat, might be a satirical shot at other ridiculous vulnerability names. Naming issues aside, it’s an impressive bit of work, numbered CVE-2019-1649. At the same time, Red Balloon Security disclosed another vulnerability that allowed command injection by an authenticated user.

Odds and Ends

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This Week In Security: Backdoors In Cisco Switches, PGP Spoofing In Emails, Git Ransomware

May 13, 2019 by 7 Comments

Some switches in Cisco’s 9000 series are susceptible to a remote vulnerability, numbered CVE-2019-1804 . It’s a bit odd to call it a vulnerability, actually, because the software is operating as intended. Cisco shipped out these switches with the same private key hardcoded in software for all root SSH logins. Anyone with the key can log in as root on any of these switches.

Cisco makes a strange claim in their advisory, that this is only exploitable over IPv6. This seems very odd, as there is nothing about SSH or the key authentication process that is IPv6 specific. This suggests that there is possibly another blunder, that they accidentally left the SSH port open to the world on IPv6. Another possibility is that they are assuming that all these switches are safely behind NAT routers, and therefore inaccessible through IPv4. One of the advantages/disadvantages of IPv6 is that there is no NAT, and all the network devices are accessible from the outside network. (Accessible in the sense that a route exists. Firewalling is still possible, of course.)

It’s staggering how many devices, even high end commercial devices, are shipped with unintentional yet effective backdoors, just like this one. Continue reading “This Week In Security: Backdoors In Cisco Switches, PGP Spoofing In Emails, Git Ransomware” →

This Week In Security: Facebook Hacked Your Email, Cyber On The Power Grid, And A Nasty Zero-day

May 1, 2019 by 33 Comments

Ah, Facebook. Only you could mess up email verification this badly, and still get a million people to hand over their email address passwords. Yes, you read that right, Facebook’s email verification scheme was to ask users for their email address and email account password. During the verification, Facebook automatically downloaded the account’s contact list, with no warning and no way to opt out.

The amount of terrible here is mind-boggling, but perhaps we need a new security rule-of-thumb for these kind of situations. Don’t ever give an online service the password to a different service. In order to make use of a password in this case, it’s necessary to handle it in plain-text. It’s not certain how long Facebook stored these passwords, but they also recently disclosed that they have been storing millions of Facebook and Instagram passwords in plain-text internally.

This isn’t the first time Facebook has been called out for serious privacy shenanigans, either: In early 2018 it was revealed that the Facebook Android app had been uploading phone call records without informing users. Mark Zuckerberg has recently outlined his plan to give Facebook a new focus on privacy. Time will tell whether any real change will occur.

Cyber Can Mean Anything

Have you noticed that “cyber” has become a meaningless buzz-word, particularly when used by the usual suspects? The Department of Energy released a report that contained a vague but interesting sounding description of an event: “Cyber event that causes interruptions of electrical system operations.” This was noticed by news outlets, and people have been speculating ever since. What is frustrating about this is the wide range of meaning covered by the term “cyber event”. Was it an actual attack? Was Trinity shutting down the power stations, or did an intern trip over a power cord?
Continue reading “This Week In Security: Facebook Hacked Your Email, Cyber On The Power Grid, And A Nasty Zero-day” →

Shadowhammer, WPA3, And Alexa Is Listening: This Week In Computer Security

April 19, 2019 by 21 Comments

Let’s get caught up on computer security news! The big news is Shadowhammer — The Asus Live Update Utility prompted users to download an update that lacked any description or changelog. People thought it was odd, but the update was properly signed by Asus, and antivirus scans reported it as safe.

Nearly a year later, Kaspersky Labs announced they had confirmed this strange update was indeed a supply chain attack — one that attacks a target by way of another vendor. Another recent example is the backdoor added to CCleaner, when an unknown actor compromised the build system for CCleaner and used that backdoor to target other companies who were using CCleaner. Interestingly, the backdoor in CCleaner has some similarities to the backdoor in the Asus updater. Combined with the knowledge that Asus was one of the companies targeted by this earlier breach, the researchers at Kaspersky Lab suggest that the CCleaner attack might have been the avenue by which Asus was compromised.

Shadowhammer sits quietly on the vast majority of machines it infects. It’s specifically targeted at a pool of about 600 machines, identified by their network card’s MAC address. We’ve not seen any reporting yet on who was on the target list, but Kaspersky is hosting a service to check whether your MAC is on the list.

While we’re still waiting for the full technical paper, researchers gave a nearly 30 minute presentation about Shadowhammer, embedded below the break along with news about Dragonblood, Amazon listening to your conversations, and the NSA delivering on Ghidra source code. See you after the jump!
Continue reading “Shadowhammer, WPA3, And Alexa Is Listening: This Week In Computer Security” →

Spoiler, Use-After-Free, And Ghidra: This Week In Computer Security

March 13, 2019 by 24 Comments

The past few days have been busy if you’re trying to keep up with the pace of computer security news. Between a serious Chromium bug that’s actively being exploited on Windows 7 systems, the NSA releasing one of their tools as an open source project, and a new Spectre-like speculative execution flaw in Intel processors, there’s a lot to digest.
Continue reading “Spoiler, Use-After-Free, And Ghidra: This Week In Computer Security” →