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Routers Pose Biggest Security Threat To Home Networks
Nerval's Lobster writes "The remote-access management flaw that allowed TheMoon worm to thrive on Linksys routers is far from the only vulnerability in that particular brand of hardware, though it might be simpler to call all home-based wireless routers gaping holes of insecurity than to list all the flaws in those of just one vendor. An even longer list of Linksys (and Cisco and Netgear) routers were identified in January as having a backdoor built into the original versions of their firmware in 2005 and never taken out. Serious as those flaws are, they don't compare to the list of vulnerabilities resulting from an impossibly complex mesh of sophisticated network services that make nearly every router aimed at homes or small offices an easy target for attack, according to network-security penetration- and testing services. For example, wireless routers (especially home routers owned by technically challenged consumers) are riddled with security holes stemming from design goals that emphasize usability over security, which often puts consumers at risk from malware or attacks on devices they don't know how to monitor, but through which flow all their personal and financial information via links to online banking, entertainment, credit cards and even direct connections to their work networks, according to a condemnation of the Home Network Administration Protocol from Tenable Network Security. Meanwhile, a January 2013 study from Rapid7 found 40 million to 50 million network-enabled devices, including nearly all home routers, were vulnerable to exploits using UPnP. Is there any way to fix this target-rich environment?"
If only there were an easily upgradeable open source router operating system to which vendors could add support for their hardware leaving long term maintenance to a larger community.
Pentesting the custom firmwares from projects like OpenWRT/DD-WRT/Tomato etc?
DD-WRT is based on the open source OpenWRT, but DD-WRT itself is proprietary.
By default, routers should ship with automatic firmware updates enabled. This should be difficult to disable and robust enough that it'll *just work* with no user intervention.
The problem is that this kind of automatic update process can be a security hole in and of itself. If there is a way for a remote system to send updates to the router's firmware, then there is the potential for a malicious user to spoof the update and send their own custom-crafted exploit code.
Or try EasyTomato or any of the other Tomato variants (Toastman, Shibby, etc.). Super easy to install, has a pretty and easy to use interface, and it's all open source.
In fact, it was even fixed for devices which are no longer in production with no need for the original vendor to even still be in business. Open source is funny that way.
First you have to find the right build of DD-WRT. This involves totally ignoring the router database, which, as one person's website put it, is either massively out of date at best, and *WRONG* at worst, liable to brick your router.
And if you join the support forum, you discover people talking about their "favorite" builds, something in over 30 years in the field I've *NEVER* heard of. And they don't have formal releases, and regression tests seem to be mostly dependent upon the lead developers.
Two months of fighting this, and debricking my router 2? 3? times, and I found one that did what I needed (that was to actually serve as a print server for a USB printer, as well as routing).. I have no idea how, or if, I'll be able to upgrade.....
mark, sr. sysadmin, Linux/Unix