Bugs which have security implications

If the password is too long, it voids the current password letting the bad guy login without a password. TP-Link never fails to impress. Firmware updates are available. However, as the article below by Paul Wagenseil details, the firmware update process is miserable. Dec 17, The bug allows a bad guy, who does not know any passwords, to access the web configuration interface of the router. D-Link suggests disabling remote administration, resetting the affected routers and using a complicated router password.

That bug impacted 10 of the same routers. Spring puts this bug in perspective, noting a long history of bugs in D-Link routers. A September bug can leak passwords. A May bug allowed DNS hijacking. Also in , the L and AC had multiple vulnerabilities that could allow a hacker to gain remote access and control of device. Note the plural use of the word hackers. The router was hacked by seven, yes, seven, different groups. It has been a few days and, so far, no response from D-Link on their security bulletin page.

Will they acknowledge the flaw? Will they fix it? Time will tell. The bigger picture, however, involves other D-Link router. It is likely that other similar routers share the same buggy software. The bugs are easily exploited and let attackers bypass the logon processes and execute malicious code. Three teams hacked the router on the first day. March A remote, unauthenticated attacker may be able to execute commands with root privileges on a buggy router.

This can happen as the result of viewing a specially-crafted web page. The bug was publicly disclosed by Fortinet's FortiGuard Labs, same as below.

This appears to be the same bugs as below, just that is has been found in six more routers. Proof of Concept. On a vulnerable router, this will disconnect the internet for a minute. They have critical bugs. An attacker halfway across the world could hijack these routers without needing a password. Everyone suggests throwing these routers away.

I agree. End of Life is the techie term for the computing devices that are too old to bother with. As Seinfeld might have said: No bug fixes for you! Manufacturers win twice with routers that are deemed EoL: they don't have spend money fixing bugs and they motivate customers to buy new routers. Usually EoL devices are no longer sold. Not so with D-Link. Three of them can still be bought new from third-party sellers on Amazon's U. Is the same bug in any other D-Link routers? None of our business.

Fortinet, which found the bug, does not say which or how many routers they tested. And, the D-Link response is limited to these four routers with no mention of any others. This is the original bug report. The root cause is the lack of a sanity check for arbitrary commands executed by the native system command execution, which is a typical security pitfall suffered by many firmware manufacturers.

SOHOpelessly Broken 2. This time the protocol is WSD a. Is there a printer in the house? WSD communication starts with requests to the IPv4 multicast address IPv6 uses FFC link-local scope.

Being exposed to the WAN is only one bug, the other is that devices should only respond to requests to these two IP addresses. WSD responses sometimes come from port , sometimes from random high numbered ports. No article said anything about the failure of the routers to block these vulnerable devices.

UPnP haunts us still. For good luck, also test TCP port from your home. Test UDP port from outside your home with: nmap -sU -p 1. They refer to these two networks as Host and Guest, most people refer to them as Private and Guest.

Quoting: " We sent a draft of our findings to the manufacturers of the routers None of the other router vendors responded to our disclosure ". As I say elsewhere on this site, don't use a consumer router. The bugs are pretty obscure. For example, on some routers, a DHCP NAK from one network is erroneously sent to the other network which can be used to send a small amount of data to the other network. This too can be used transfer data between the two networks.

There were also some timing attacks. The biggest difference is that it connects to the Internet via 4G rather than an Ethernet cable. Pen Test Partners found multiple vulnerabilities in several well known vendors Mi-Fi devices, including pre- and post-auth command injection and code execution.

The vendors involved were generally poor at responding to disclosure attempts. ZTE was the worst, they responded that a device was end of life, so the bugs would not be fixed They also found bugs in Netgear and TP-Link devices.

Good article. The bug lets a remote attacker get complete control over the device. The attacker does not need to login or authenticate to the device to exploit the bug.

The problem is triggered with a malformed user agent field in HTTP headers. Patches have been issued but device owners have to manually download them and install them. First, they have to insure the correct hardware version for the available firmware, then they have to get the firmware for their country.

All processes on these devices run with root-level access which is just asking for trouble. They just released an updated version of their IOS XE operating system to patch a high severity bug - insufficient cross-site request forgery CSRF protections in the web-based user interface of the software.

The bug can be exploited by an unauthenticated, remote attacker who could persuade an already logged in user of the web interface to follow a malicious link. The link could then perform arbitrary actions with the privilege level of the victimized user. If the victim is an administrator, bad guys could modify the configuration, run commands and even reload a vulnerable device. The good news is that a victim has to be logged in to the system before they can be exploited. Also, exploitation requires the HTTP Server feature to be active and it is not always active by default this is version dependent.

Lots of Cisco issues over the last few years. Paraphrasing Red Balloon: There are two bugs that affect about different Cisco devices. This is due to multiple hardware design flaws in the TAm. The second is a remote command injection vulnerability against IOS XE version 16 that allows remote code execution as root. The TAm is a proprietary Cisco hardware security module. It is the root of trust that underpins all other Cisco security mechanisms.

Thrangrycat allows an attacker to make persistent modification to the TAm, thereby defeating the secure boot process and invalidating the chain of trust at its root. While the flaws are based in hardware, they can be exploited remotely.

Since the flaws involve the design of the hardware, it is unlikely that any software patch will fully resolve the fundamental issues. Cisco is working on patches for Thrangrycat, but notes that the patch will not be a straightforward update for most devices but instead will require "on-premise[s] reprogramming of a low-level hardware component.

Thangrycat: a deadly Cisco vulnerability named after an emoji by Cory Doctorow May 22, Quoting: "Once this system is compromised, it can be forced to give false reports on the state of the system: for example, it might report that its OS has been successfully updated to patch a vulnerability when really the update has just been thrown away. There are no workarounds available. Cisco says the bug is only vulnerable to local attackers. Interesting conflict with Red Balloon.

A successful exploit could Here, the New York Times does what it does best, have unqualified people cover a tech story. They get an explanation of the problem, from Red Balloon targeted at 5 year old children. Beats me why the newspaper can't hire actual techies.

Quoting their virtual child: " This is structural. Thrangrycat is awful for two reasons. First, if a hacker exploits this weakness, they can do whatever they want to your routers. Second, the attack can happen remotely But the fix can only be applied In person Thrangrycat only works once you have administrative access to the device.

Unfortunately, Attack 1 is a garden variety vulnerability. They created the patches, they just didn't publish them. The bug lets a low-skilled attacker to get full remote access to a vulnerable router.

The bug was first disclosed to TP-Link in October Shortly thereafter, they released a patch for the WRN router. But, the WRN was vulnerable to the same bug and no patch was released for it. TP-Link was warned about this in January , yet The bug. TP-Link kept thousands of vulnerable routers at risk of remote hijack, failed to alert customers by Vincy Davis of Packt May 23, Over 25, Linksys Smart Wi-Fi routers vulnerable to sensitive information disclosure flaw by Troy Mursch May 13, Thirty three Linksys routers are buggy and Linksys will not fix it.

They tried to fix it five years ago, but they screwed that up. Yet another confirmation of the opinion I offered on this site from the get-go back in - avoid consumer routers. The flaw affects Linksys Smart Wi-Fi routers.

It allows unauthenticated remote access to sensitive information and its easily exploited by bad guys with little technical knowledge. The routers leak information both about themselves and about every yes, every device that has ever connected to them.

Sometimes it also leaks the device type, model number, and a description of the attached device. Leaking the MAC address lets bad guys determine the physical location of the router.

Data provided by BinaryEdge, shows that 25, Linksys Smart Wi-Fi routers are currently leaking sensitive information to the public. The full list is here. This is yet another in a long line of HNAP bugs. The bug can also reveal if a router is using the default password thousands are without even trying to login.

The worst part is that Linksys tried to fix this five years ago but clearly screwed that up. Then, when contacted about it recently, they had no interest in fixing it properly. Yes, if you disable remote web access you block the information leak. Best part of the article: "Ars emailed press representatives of Belkin, the company that acquired Linksys in , seeking comment earlier this week and never received a response.

Cisco warns over critical router flaw by Liam Tung of ZDNet April 18, Cisco has disclosed 29 new vulnerabilities, 5, 6 or 7 of which are doozies. Its too much for tech reporters to digest. The bug is as bad as bad gets, it can be exploited remotely by a bad guy without a password.

There is a patch and a workaround. As with the first bug a remote bad guy without a password can obtain full control of vulnerable devices. If the devices accept Telnet connections, a bad guy who sends malformed Telnet options while establishing a connection can execute arbitrary code. The Threatpost article below offers some context, noting that earlier this month, Cisco re-patched flaws for two high-severity bugs after their first attempt was botched.

And, they reported two new router bugs with no fixes or workarounds. Just what you want in a router vendor. No other models were tested, so it is likely that others in the same family are vulnerable too.

These models are old they are Mbps Wi-Fi N and have been discontinued. The bug allows bad guys to take control of the device from a remote location. Sounds worse than it is. You have to already be logged on to the web interface to exploit the flaw. And, the flaw is in the web interface, so if Remote Administration is disabled, as it often is, then it can not be exploited from overseas.

TP-Link issued patches. Why are so many of these reports about ancient routers? A Command Injection flaw can only be exploited by a user already logged on to the device.

Because HTTPS is not enforced in the web interface, an attacker on the LAN side can intercept login requests using a packet sniffer and then replay the requests to get admin access to the web interface of the router.

Packet sniffing a login request also provides a salted password hash SHA An unauthenticated attacker can retrieve the password salt simply by visiting a URL in a web browser. Thus, an attacker could perform an offline dictionary attack to recover the original password. Of course, the focus on passwords is because insecure firmware, like this, always uses the same userid. If you have a G you should verify this. The real lesson here is not use hardware from an ISP.

See the Disclosure Timeline in the first article below and judge the Verizon repsonse for yourself. Shows how to check the firmware release on the buggy gateway device. TP-Link ignored the problem. To me, this is the more important issue, much more interesting than the bug itself.

Garret wrote: "I reported this to TP-Link in December via their security disclosure form, a process that was made difficult by the "Detailed description" field being limited to characters. The page informed me that I'd hear back within three business days - a couple of weeks later, with no response, I tweeted at them asking for a contact and heard nothing back. Ignoring security problems is one of three mistakes TP-Link made.

They also ship devices with debug daemons, software intended for testing, that does not belong in a released product. This bug allows allows arbitrary command execution, as root, without authentication, from devices on the LAN. To better control access to the router from LAN-side devices see the Local Administration section of my security checklist. Excellent article. Worth reading even if you do not own TP-Link devices. The BSI assigned a severity rating of "high". The bugs allow attackers to bypass the logon processes and execute malicious code.

The bugs are easily exploited. My guess time will tell is that these bugs will not be fixed. They are looking into it. Check their website for updates. Where on the website? Which website? But Cisco makes routers and the bigger issue, to me, is just how trustworthy Cisco is. They appear on this bug list often.

Would you buy a router from them? Quoting: "ISE is distributed by Cisco as a virtual appliance. We have analysed version 2. By putting them all together, we can achieve remote code execution as root, provided we can trap an administrator into visiting the page vulnerable to the stored cross site scripting. They are still shipping and recommending a product version vulnerable to unauthenticated remote code execution, with a fully working public exploit and no way to track fixes or fixed versions for these vulnerabilities.

First published January 9, Are the bugs fixed? You have to be Cisco customer to find out. That is not what trustworthy companies do. Cisco released patches for the bugs on January 23, The next day , proof of concept software was released that exploited the bugs.

The day after that, bad guys were scanning for vulnerable Cisco routers. The first two bugs expose information about the router to anyone who asks - no password is needed. One of these bugs exposes the Admin password. With that, bad guys can abuse the third bug to run any Linux command on the box. Information about attacks on these bugs is on the News page. This article explains how the encryption protecting the Admin user password was poor: " There is no patch, but there is a work-around.

The most interesting question is whether this is a bug or a feature. The devices ship with an in-built privileged user account that is used for the initial login.

This account can not be removed. It is defined in a software-internal data structure and its not visible in either the running configuration or the startup configuration of an affected device. Bad guys can use this account to log in to a vulnerable device and execute commands with full admin privileges. The work-around is creating a user account with access privilege level of 15 or higher? But, if that account gets deleted, the hidden one works again, without notifying system administrators.

It sure feels like a back door that can be easily hidden in case the virtual cops are coming. Why else hide the existence of this in-built account? Also, there have been many other backdoors discovered in Cisco software over the last year or so.

It has been about 3 months and still no patch. Initially released Nov. Gibson felt that this is a feature, not a bug, saying "This sounds deliberate". He even objected to Cisco referring to this as a vulnerability. There is a fix for SRM 1. The fix was released Dec 26th in firmware version 1.

Bug Synology-SA is in Netatalk versions prior to 3. The bug allows remote unauthenticated attackers to execute arbitrary code. This is also fixed in SRM 1. The bug: "An authenticated user can visit the page atbox. No excuse for this at all. An unauthenticated user can visit the page 'spaces. A remote unauthenticated user can access the file 'dirary0. The bug descriptions all say both that the attacker has to be authenticated and that the attacker does not have to be authenticated.

It is not clear if these bugs can be exploited remotely or not. D-Link was notified of the bugs in June and never created a patch. The pattern is clear. This programming bug is so bad, really so amateurish, that avoiding D-Link devices altogether seems the smart thing to do. Huawei for creating the vulnerability and the companies running Huawei routers for using default credentials.

All they need do is examine the HTML for the logon page. The problem was reported to Huawei in Sept. The vulnerable routers are high end devices used by ISPs and the patch has not yet been installed everywhere. Which specific routers are vulnerable was not disclosed.

It is a bug, we fixed it, but the fix is not yet installed everywhere. Two IP cameras were also buggy. For all the flaws, it is not clear if they can be exploited remotely or not. One flaw requires the attacker to already be logged in to the router, but another one does not require any authentication.

One flaw makes it possible to execute arbitrary commands on the router with root privileges. The routers are old End of Life and will not be patched. A denial-of-service flaw and a file-leaking bug are both due to input sanitisation mistakes. The directory traversal bug lets anyone read any file on the system. Parsing bugs led to two remote code execution RCE flaws that can be exploited by a logged-in user. However, the other two flaws can be exploited by anyone that can access the web interface.

Definitely exploitable on the LAN side, and if remote administration is enabled, then exploitable on the WAN side too. The article said that fixes are available, but that does not seem to be true. On March 29, I found the newest firmware for the vulnerable hardware versions 2 and 3 to have been released in August and August , well before these bugs were found. D-Link issued a patch three months after the bug was first reported.

No one has said anything about whether similar models might also be affected. Seems like no one has bothered testing other models. The model in question was chosen at random, the researcher was looking into something unrelated and just happened to have this particular router available to him. So, it is quite possible that other D-Link routers are also vulnerable. Secondly, what is the difference between a bug and a vulnerability?

Me and my colleagues have found many definitions of a bug and a vulnerability. However, we had come up with the following one, which seems to be the strictest and to include all the others:. According to the definition, a bug exists due to problems with a planned scenario. The reasons for such problems are poorly designed logic, bad implementation, or random mistakes like typos.

Vulnerabilities, on the other hand, appear due to insufficient understanding of certain aspects of the technology e. Thus, bugs are unique, whereas vulnerabilities are rather standard and can be classified. Both bugs and vulnerabilities can violate critical properties of a program. Any vulnerabilities that are discovered and used for offense should only remain secret for as short a time as possible.

I have proposed six months, with the right to appeal for another six months in exceptional circumstances. The VEP needs to be reformed and strengthened as well. A report from last year by Ari Schwartz and Rob Knake, who both previously worked on cybersecurity policy at the White House National Security Council, makes some good suggestions on how to further formalize the process, increase its transparency and oversight, and ensure periodic review of the vulnerabilities that are kept secret and used for offense.

This is the least we can do. A bill recently introduced in both the Senate and the House calls for this and more. This prevented a true disaster when the Shadow Brokers exposed the vulnerability on the Internet.

That is one of the important lessons to be learned from WannaCry. This essay originally appeared in Foreign Affairs. Sure, some secrets are necessary, but what the military does these days has been allowed to become so secretive they are beyond oversight, control and accountability.

They do what they please. They violate the rules, laws and court orders at will. When seriously cornered for rogue conduct, they strong arm Congress into passing laws exempting and indemnifying them. That makes us wonder why Microsoft with full access to the source code fails to find vulnerabilities …. Of course, a vulnerability is only important if you really really need to get into a system without help from the system operators.

On another hand if you can get help from the system operators, for example because they happen to be part of your team, then more important than having a vulnerability is to make sure that your code is sufficiently custom so it is not recognized by anti-virus. Hackers appeared to infiltrate payment data systems with malicious code that was undetectable by existing antivirus systems , Howard Riefs, a spokesman for Sears Holdings, told NBC News.

Vulnerabilities are plentiful, and finding them can be expensive. Microsoft produces the quality of software the market demands. Yes, burglars, thieves, and robbers are criminals. So are those who deny us the right and ability to defend ourselves from them. Users have work to do, and for them a computer is just a tool. This is like asking a framer or carpenter, who once did just fine with a claw hammer, to overhaul his pneumatic nailer on the job site because a new version of a retaining clip on some internal ratchet was specified.

Oh, by the way, a new starting capacitor was specified for his air compressor. I am sorry. We need a stricter standard of liability than that. Microsoft is run by foreigners with military interests totally hostile to United States businesses and government. We are at a state of total cyber-war, and Microsoft is simply not up to par. This is true but must modify it with lock-in. So, they produce the quality that their customers can tolerate or have no choice for.

They also consistently have reduced the expectations where people think these issues are normal. So, Microsoft is one of the special few that can ignore quality to a large degree vs many in market that will be judged on it. Because if your system s get borked you have to hire a bunch of expensive folks who supposedly know how to return control to you or you are going to buy a new computer.

In fact, we know Microsoft is even responsible for West Nile Virus! Critical infrastructure has to be socialized, in this case the code of Windows, and has to be made opensource. End of story. No other explanation for a statement like this otherwise:. So you are saying the market demands a solitaire game with a broken random number generator that repeats the same hands over and over? Yeah, no. The point of capitalism is to ensure the consumers are disorganized so they cannot make demands and you can sell crappier products at a higher price.

Second, this line of reasoning reflects a very basic misinterpretation of economics. Aggregate outcomes are not in general or even usually interpretable as an aggregation of individual preferences. After all, that is their revealed preference, right?

As isolated individuals, they simply have no capacity to express this preference. The less information the producers publish, the less the choices of the consumer reflect anything meaningful. Also, for the money that has been spent globally on Windows we could have probably built an OS that is equal in features but where every component was prudently designed and formally verified.

Some say NSA spying is bringing government in DC to a screeching halt because, finally, the same elected representatives who passed laws to make it happen or played three monkeys to flagrant abuses now understand they have also been deemed targets, adversaries, suspects and data sources. Then speak with the pockebook. Dump MS Windows and their other products. There are much better software companies than Microsoft, even teams that write much better software and give it as a gift to the world for free.

The market, for some unknown reason, chooses voluntarily stay at the worst software ever written. I desist to understand this behaviour, these poor choices. I am happy to play without following the market rules. No Windows here. No OS X here.

No iOS here. No Android here, and no Linux here neither. Only good and reliable operating systems. The required code base did not exist in XP for auto-spreading, if I recall correctly…. One of the business strategies of Microsoft was to bribe software companies to write Microsoft-exclusive software.

They used Internet Explorer to hold back the web, and got companies to write software in proprietary languages. With businesses, there is also the talent pool which slows the adoption of different systems or technologies i. We trust Microsoft and other software companies. Microsoft operates today exactly as they have since their inception.

None of this is news. A Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment, for sure. MS is in a survival mode. It is only theoretically possible for them to find -all- bugs in tens of millions of lines of code.

Then there is the code they keep churning out year after year, and the bug fixes which seem to be continuous. How many bugs inhabit the bug fixes? Anura, The goal of most businesses is to obtain a monopoly in one sector, then soak the hell out of the customers.

Monsanto wrote a law preventing -anyone- from mentioning GMO content in a product. Obviously, the NSA and the crooks are more motivated. Do they have a team assigned to a full code review? Or do they just chase reported bugs. I recall a while back, they had an API the processed jpg files. Someone on the outside discovered an undocumented parameter that transfered execution jumped to a given address. Now what possible reason could they have for doing that? The hacker. Does the maker bear any responsibility?

Look up Therac Half a dozen killed, and no one punished. This is obviously a problem. It goes without saying that building secure applications is imperative for any engineering team today. Without baking security into your application, your company opens itself up to leaking sensitive data, degrading user experience, or allowing account takeover.

As most companies in the world shift to be software-first, application security will only become increasingly important.

While clearly vitally important, current AppSec models are broken. The traditional approaches to application security prioritize training over tooling and finding over fixing. InfoSec teams are holding onto dated practices of periodic, point in time scans of production.

Vulnerabilities are kicked back to the engineering team in long lists or large Jira backlogs, which then sit deprioritized over feature development. Adding to this problem is the fact that the majority of the security products on the market are legacy enterprise tools.

They are built for a different era of software development and continue to serve the technology dinosaurs that have yet to adopt modern DevOps workflow.

Features are built for security teams and favor long approval chains and reports rather than enabling the developers who will fix the security bugs to get to the job of fixing found issues. While shifting security left has been a trade show booth tagline for years now, we are at the advent of that truly becoming a reality.