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NetGear Also Has Remote Access Wide Open
Glenn Fleishman writes "On the heels of Linksys's WRT54G problem of not allowing remote access to be disabled in certain cases and firmware, BugTraq published this report that NetGear's WG602 access point has a hidden password that provides remote and local administrative control. Unlike Linksys's, where turning the firewall on (which is on by default, but a researcher found new units in which it was off when taken out of the box), the NetGear hole cannot be disabled. The backdoor seems to have been created by the vendor that packaged the device for NetGear."
http://kbserver.netgear.com/support_details.asp?dn ldID=735
I was going to buy a Netgear wireless access point/router this week.
I initially went for it because my experience with their wired products has been good. A swift rethink would seem to be required.
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
ah, mod points
Everyone but the vendors knows it's a bad idea. Cisco recently made the same mistake.
With the automation Dell has in terms of its manufacturing process, I would not be surprised if that password is unique to the Dell Tag number itself instead of just a wide open tag for anyone to use.
Well. at least this username/password doesn't work with a WG302 with firmware 1.5.
Netgear Firmware Upgrade
NetGear WGR614 is not affected by this bug. I'm going to try to get its firmware and follow the same procedure listed in that Bugtraq report to see what I can find.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
I stand corrected, here.
"The only way to clear the BIOS password is with a Master Reset Password provided by Dell for that Model No. and they will not give you the master unless you can give them the name. address and telephone of the registered owner. However the password is universal for all laps with the same model no., so if you know someone who is a registered owner, you can call Dell and get the master."
Reference here. That being said, the master for an Inspiron 5000 is BLVJCH. Booyah!
Nothing but the finest in meaningless drivel
The URL is "mangled" for people browsing with mobile devices. The space is added so tiny displays can word wrap the text. (And also so crapflooders can't make your horizontal scroll bar appear.)
Personally I think the number of people using such browsers is probably so small that there is no justification for this "feature", but since Slashdot isn't likely to change, URLs should be submitted as proper links and not just plan text.
I know this is a huge problem for the general public, but for those of us with a linux machine, do what I do and save yourself some trouble: put two network cards in the linux machine. Connect one to the internet and the other to your wireless router's normal ethernet ports (don't use the port that is supposed to be for the internet). Then, just set up your linux firewall/NAT, and you get all the benefits of wireless and a wired hub on the inside, with a linux machine doing the routing/firewalling for security from the outside. Since the router isn't on the net, no one can even touch it.
Just checked my WG602v2 and the factory firmware upgrade 2.0rc5 and they do not have the backdoor.
Whew!
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
Look into Smoothwall. I'm using it on an old PPro 200 as a firewall/router. It supports 3 networks at the moment (red/external, Green/internal, Orange/restricted (wlan for instance). I have an older netgear router that I keep as a spare (the old PPro 200 has to die sometime...), but even with that, the Smoothwall config can be dumped to floppy and moved to a completely different machine easily.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
Sorry for the AC reply...
You can change your NTP Server setting on this router with some of the more up to date firmwares. I'm using A2.4 and there is an option to set the NTP server of your choice under the "Schedule" Menu.
Even the guy who reported it has admitted it and Linksys issued a statement.
The problem still exists. If you disable the firewall and disable remote admin, you can still get the remote admin page over the WAN. That, to me, is a bug. Okay, it may be a weird config as they stated, but it's a bug nevertheless.
They also have beta firmware up on that link you posted to fix the problem.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Smoothwall is exactly that, a custom Linux distro with boot-from-cd install that only requires you to hit "enter" a couple dozen times to turn any old 2 nic pc into a pre-configured modern firewall with internal NAT and DHCP.
I use it and find it very handy (lots of old PC hardware about)
Its not users who are broken, it's systems not taking account their likely behaviour and fixing it technically.
I'm curious what you will do with this information -- what can you do that you couldn't do before?
Well, I used it to verify whether I was vulnerable. I was. I'm glad to observe it. I've downloaded the new firmware and hope to be safe. They couldn't contact me via registration card because I NEVER send in those things. They're just marketing gimmicks used as an opt-in.
Moreover, the script kiddies will manage to get this information whether or not it's publicly posted. This way, I have it as well as them.
Just my view.
-- We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of other people. La Rochefoucauld
According to a recent BugTraq by Jaco Swart, all the new firmware does is change the backdoor username from "super" to "superman" and the password to "21241036".
Does Netgear really think the security community is that stupid? They should be ashamed.
If you don't immediately check for upgrades when you open a box and haven't with this hardware, though, perhaps you deserve to get 0wn3d?