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Netgear's Amusing "fix" for WG602v1 Backdoor

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the get-your-giggle-on dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Recently Slashdot reported that the Netgear router has as WLAN backdoor. According to this report by the news service of the German publisher Heise Netgear "fixed" the problem with a firmware update. And what is the fix? According to Heise, they didn't remove the backdoor at all. Instead they just changed the login information! They replaced the old user name 'super' with 'superman', and changed the old password to '21241036'. "

5 of 515 comments (clear)

  1. full-disclosure hackers knew for a while by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The blackhats that subscribe to

    http://lists.netsys.com/mailman/listinfo/full-di sc losure

    knew about this on irc for a while.

    EU via interpol desires, and us's NSA/NRO both desire various entrypoints.

    cisco's fiascos may be a trend. This netgear is only the tip of the iceberg I bet.

  2. Who reads slashdot? by tony_gardner · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I realise that this is a bit redundant, but I read the slashdot artile linked to, and what to I see but:

    Re:Fixed in new firmware, available here: (Score:3, Informative)
    by Chucky B. Bear (785810) on Saturday June 05, @03:10PM (#9345433)
    I've just upgraded to the latest firmware. It is NOT FIXED!!!! They have simply gone and changed the username and password to something else. There is STILL a default superuser account with password.

    (You can find it yourselve by just taking similiar steps as in the securityfoces article.)

    Maybe reading slashdot sometimes would be a good idea.

    1. Re:Who reads slashdot? by Chucky+B.+Bear · · Score: 5, Interesting
      Yeah I hate to say it but told you so!!! ;-) I posted that just before the securityfocus mail. Its funny how this all ended up as a Heise article now. They could've at least given me some credit for finding it.

      I did talk to a netgear support engineer yesterday and he didn't know what I was talking about, so now I'm still waiting to hear anything back from them.

  3. Re:Bianry Edit by MrBlue+VT · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I have an earlier Netgear product (RT314). It's actually a rebranded Zytel product, so this trick may not work on other models.

    However, it was possible to edit the firmware in a binary editor. There was a checksum in the firmware, but you could fix it. You needed to connect a serial cable to the management port. When you made a change and uploaded the new firmware to the router and rebooted, the router would helpfully tell you what the old checksum was and what it expected the new checksum to be. You could then just search for the old checksum string and replace it with the new one the router calculated for you.

    Pretty easy to do. And allowed you to run some of the newer Zytel firmware on the Netgear boxes.

  4. Why isn't this ilegal. by Holi · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I would think under current laws that installing an undisclosed backdoor onto someone elses property would be akin to using a trojan to allow access to anothers system. Just becaujse they sell the system does not give them the right to access to it after it is sold. I can see no beneficial reason for this as most consumer routers have a hardware reset that reloads the factory defaults.

    --
    Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.