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Time Warner Cable Modems Expose Users
eldavojohn writes "Wired is reporting on a simple hack putting some 65,000 customers at risk. The hack to gain administrative access to the cable modem/router combo is remarkably simple: '[David] Chen, founder of a software startup called Pip.io, said he was trying to help a friend change the settings on his cable modem and discovered that Time Warner had hidden administrative functions from its customers with Javascript code. By simply disabling Javascript in his browser, he was able to see those functions, which included a tool to dump the router's configuration file. That file, it turned out, included the administrative login and password in cleartext. Chen investigated and found the same login and password could access the admin panels for every router in the SMC8014 series on Time Warner's network — a grave vulnerability, given that the routers also expose their web interfaces to the public-facing internet.' If you use Time Warner's SMC8014 series cable modem/Wi-Fi router combo, watch for firmware to be released soon that they are reportedly in the process of testing."
...is to put them in bridge mode and use your own router (no matter who your provider is). Same with DSL modems. Even when they aren't misconfigured (deliberately or due to sheer incompetence) the firmware is usually buggy and limited.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Presumably armed FBI agents are en route to neutralize notorious terrorist hacker David Chen even now. 50 years in Gitmo is too good for him.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I wonder if this is the same 'hack' used to attack Belgacom.
http://tweakers.net/nieuws/63200/belgacom-hacker-publiceerde-authentieke-inloggegevens-van-klanten.html
For the curious, a quick recap in English...
A hacker going by the name 'Vendetta', supposedly an American living in Belgium, got fed up with the monthly data cap (at Belgacom, figured out that there's a way to find the username/password for a modem by browsing to it (much as in this article), did that to a claimed several thousand (285,000) modems, and is threatening to release them slowly over time until November 30th as long as Belgacom keeps its monthly data cap.
So far this hacker released 30 usernames/passwords, and they were found to be genuine.
Belgacom contacted authorities, is investigating the claimed method of hacking, blabla.
The modem in question with Belgacom is labeled a "B-Box2-modem".
While I agree with you, the issue usually isn't the small percentage of technically savvy people who use this, but rather the majority of folks looking to "plug and play". These are the security gaps that allow zombie DDoS attacks to happen so easily, as they open up easy access to lot's of similarly configured boxes.
the public-facing internet
wait. what? why?
Convenience and incompetence. They want to be able to run scripts to update/reconfigure all the modems and this is the first method that occured to them. Being stupid, they didn't think it through.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
According to TFA (my karma be damned), Web-based admin UI is enabled on these routers, not only for the LAN but for the whole fucking Internet. This must be the dumbest default setting ever.
Although I agree that it is dumb, I think that it is to make technical support easier for the company. If the company can go straight to your router and configure it then it makes their life easier. Of course, it turns out that it makes a lot of people's lives easier including hackers.
My initial, gut response to this was sheer horror. They list exploit and target side-by-side! The only mention of a fix is that it's to be 'released soon', informing any malicious agents out there that now is the time to strike.
Reading the Wired article, the right thing was done. Big company was sitting on their hands, and now that publicity has been made, they're starting to move.
Wired did the right thing. But this summary, it's fear-mongering and bad journalism.
This isn't just a security vulnerability - those things happen. This is gross negligence. There are 3 simultaneous absolutely bone-headed things here:
- PUBLIC facing web configuration? I have never, ever, ever, seen a router that did that. Not even cheesy home routers.
- JAVASCRIPT is their security? That was dumb back in 1998, but who does that now?
- CLEAR TEXT username/password? There was this great technique we used back in 1975 called hashing. Look it up. Why does it even write the username/password out anyway?
This is one of those cases of just too many stupid things all at once for it to be a mistake.
...
So you are saying I should go back to dial-up...? Because that is my only alternative. Thanks for doing my cost/benefit analysis of this situation for me! It is definitely better to have worthless internet than to just maintain my own router!
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
I was under the impression that the only user-configurable option is to add URLs to a blocking list. There is no way to put it in bridge mode, and even if it was someone could log on and change it, and simply pass all your data to their servers anyway.
This is the kind of setup you give people who don't know about security, so they can't muck it up. Of course, it needs to be secure in the first place, so this is a huge issue and fixable only with firmware (or different hardware).
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
Initially I was a little confused about the cable modem not being in bridge mode and having an admin interface at all. After RTFA, this vulnerability is only for SMC router/modem combo devices from TW. There was no mention of the Motorola cable modem I have from TW. The Motorola cable modems are acting as a bridge already because my router gets the lease to the public IP.
So apparently no worries regarding this vulnerability for me, but this certainly sucks for 65K other people.
The Javascript thing isn't important - that's how the device operates because it's been told to and, in 99% of circumstances it's an internal-only device. My printer offers up a lot worse options. However, exposing that interface to the web is stupid, as are using standardised passwords.
The former is nothing but user-education and/or forcing them into a password from the factory (like a lot of wireless routers comes with WPA keys printed on the bottom of them).
For the latter, a lot of cheap ADSL modems/routers do this, it's hardly a shock. Some of them run telnet on ports 254/255 and the only way to get rid of it is to forward that port to a non-existent IP address. Yes, it's crap security. Yes, they should know better. But, additionally, it's their fault from day one and people have known about this for YEARS.
It would also pick up on *any* external security scanner (e.g. nmap, GRC.com's ShieldsUp!) and any competent person would be testing any new system with something like that anyway. I know I've always scanned whenever I've used a new connection, if only to find what proxy servers / port-blocking / port-forwarding are in place. And yet all my Internet connections have hard-coded DNS, the router acts as nothing more than a passthrough to a real firewall (usually Linux iptables, if only for decent, configurable NAT / port-forwarding) and anything vaguely suspicious on an external scan is investigated (my ISP offer port 139 filtering as default, for example).
If you didn't know about it, test it. If you haven't already disabled it, do so. If you're that worried, change the device. This type of problem has been around for YEARS, and only the bog-standard, password is 'password', home users would ever be hurt by it. I think it's disgusting that they are, but they are not the only ISP / modem / router that has these problems.
And to claim this is new/shocking is quite misleading - most router manufacturers have suffered from this since ADSL became mainstream. Even things like BT's HomeHub have had similar security problems over the years.
Yes... it is worthLESS than broadband.
Speaking as someone who has no option of anything other than dial-up, I can tell you that it most certainly is worthless.
Remember back in 1999 how it would take 15 seconds to load a page? Now imagine that every page has flash instead of pictures and most serves will decide to give you a timeout message if you take longer than 45 seconds to respond to a request. Youtube, torrents, the whole digital distribution revolution is totally useless.
I dare you, go back to dial-up for two weeks. Completely worthless Internet. Yeah, I've still got Internet at the library, but that doesn't allow me to get patches for my OS or watch Youtube, now does it?
Obligatory Soundbite Catchphrase
Yes incompetence looks like the primary cause here. Whoever hides the access to administrative functions of anything by simple javascript on a web page should be at best fired.
It is quite amazing to see how many programmers are just totally clueless about the technology they're using. It's just appauling.
Bridge mode is just that -- it's a connection between two separate networks. In this case, the TW box is connected to the Internet and is one point of the bridge. On the other end is your home network router, which acts as the other point of the bridge. Your network is physically separate from theirs, and joined by the single patch cable between the boxes.. This is usually how these things work anyways, even when it's all in one box. The difference here is that you're using two physical boxes to ensure the separation, which avoids absurd goofs like the one described in TFA.
I was very much worried when I got Verizon FiOS. The Verizon supplied router is actually a linux box that has a web server and it throws a username/password dialog to the WAN side. I was worried so much I had another old router behind the Verizon router and connected my machines to this second router. But the other router was old and it maxed out at 10Mbps and FiOS was delivering 20Mbps. So I did some googling. Found that Verizon has been shipping that kind of routers for more than 5 years and so far no hack has been found. So I removed my second line of defense. Looks like it is a prudent idea to buy a more capable modern router and protect the machines from possible future hacks.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Sadly I have discovered they do not accept monopoly money :{
What do you mean? They've been accepting money from various monopolies for decades!
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.