router

195 Articles

In Car WiFi

June 26, 2008 by 8 Comments


You may have already heard that Chrysler is planning to provide in-car wireless internet access to its vehicles. If not, expect to hear more about it later this year when the requisite hardware becomes a sales-floor option, or next year when it becomes factory standard for some cars.

We can’t say it’s a bad idea, it’s just not a new one. Plenty of commercial portable routers are available, but they still need a modem and data plan to provide internet access. For internet access and wireless routing, look to [Nate True]’s cellphone-router combo, which uses a spare Nokia cellphone and a highly modded Wi-Fi router running OpenWRT. [True] has made it easy by providing the instructions and necessary custom code, but it seems like a lot of effort for a relatively slow connection. We think the original Stompbox is still the most fun since it has the speed of commercial devices and an open x86 OS to modify.

Malware Alters DNS Data On Routers

June 12, 2008 by 7 Comments


The Zlob trojan, also known as DNSChanger, has been around for a few years, but recent Zlob variants to appear in the wild attempt to log into routers using a list of default admin/password combos. If they succeed, they alter the DNS records on the router to reroute traffic through the attacker’s server.

Our friend [Dan Kaminisky] recently did a presentation warning against vulnerabilities in internet browser plugins that allow attackers to mount DNS rebinding attacks against routers with default passwords.. Though it achieves the same end, Zlob is different because it infects by the tried-and-true method of fooling users into downloading it inside a fake video codec. Once it is running on a client machine, it is free to attempt to use the default admin id and password of the router to log in and alter DNS settings. It even supports the DD-WRT firmware.

Even if a system is wiped clean of Zlob trojans, the router could still be compromised. The good news is that it is easy to fix and even easier to prevent. Fixing it takes no more than wiping all network clients clean, then resetting the router and restoring custom settings. Prevention is a simple matter of changing the router’s password.

[photo: fbz]

DNS Spoofing With Ettercap

June 7, 2008 by 12 Comments


[IronGeek] has published his latest video how-to: DNS Spoofing with Ettercap. Ettercap is designed specifically to perform man in the middle attacks on your local network. It can do ARP poisoning, collect passwords, fingerprint OSes, and content filtering. For DNS spoofing, you just need to edit a config file that defines which domains resolve to which IP addresses. You can use wildcards for the domains. In the video, he uses Linux because the network interfaces are easier to remember. Once you’re done playing with DNS spoofing, remember to flush your local cache otherwise your browser will continue to go to the wrong IP.

[photo: mattdork]

Phlashing Denial Of Service Attack, The New Hype

May 20, 2008 by 10 Comments


Imagine how surprised we were to discover that by accidentally bricking our router we were executing a brand new attack: Phlashing Denial Of Service (PDOS). This week at EUSecWest, researcher [Rich Smith] will present the theoretical PDOS attack. Instead of taking over control of an embedded system, the attacker turns it into a nonfunctioning brick by flashing it with a broken firmware. Anyone who has flashed a device knows the danger of interrupting the procedure.

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FON Mp3 Streaming Router

September 23, 2007 by 6 Comments


I was looking for streaming solutions the other day. Little did I know that [John] would be sending in a hack for adding an mp3 decoder board to the La Fonera. The final device has both a web and command line interface which let you connect to any shoutcast/icecast streaming server. John has even gone so far as to provide the Openwrt image for the router with all of the software components you need.