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Malvertising Campaign Infects Your Router Instead of Your Browser (bleepingcomputer.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: Malicious ads are serving exploit code to infect routers, instead of browsers, in order to insert ads in every site users are visiting. Unlike previous malvertising campaigns that targeted users of old Flash or Internet Explorer versions, this campaign focused on Chrome users, on both desktop and mobile devices. The malicious ads included in this malvertising campaign contain exploit code for 166 router models, which allow attackers to take over the device and insert ads on websites that didn't feature ads, or replace original ads with the attackers' own. Researchers haven't yet managed to determine an exact list of affected router models, but some of the brands targeted by the attackers include Linksys, Netgear, D-Link, Comtrend, Pirelli, and Zyxel. Because the attack is carried out via the user's browser, using strong router passwords or disabling the administration interface is not enough. The only way users can stay safe is if they update their router's firmware to the most recent versions, which most likely includes protection against the vulnerabilities used by this campaign. The "campaign" is called DNSChanger EK and works when attackers buy ads on legitimate websites and insert malicious JavaScript in these ads, "which use a WebRTC request to a Mozilla STUN server to determine the user's local IP address," according to BleepingComputer. "Based on this local IP address, the malicious code can determine if the user is on a local network managed by a small home router, and continue the attack. If this check fails, the attackers just show a random legitimate ad and move on. For the victims the crooks deem valuable, the attack chain continues. These users receive a tainted ad which redirects them to the DNSChanger EK home, where the actual exploitation begins. The next step is for the attackers to send an image file to the user's browser, which contains an AES (encryption algorithm) key embedded inside the photo using the technique of steganography. The malicious ad uses this AES key to decrypt further traffic it receives from the DNSChanger exploit kit. Crooks encrypt their operations to avoid the prying eyes of security researchers."
Just configure a Linux router and be done with this non-sense (flashing your router, etc.). That's what I have been doing since 1995.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
well, it seems that way.
Of course, it doesn't work any more, but now I am safe.
This fits in nicely with the recent attack that works on Netgear routers where you can execute a cgi-bin script as root without authorization. http://lifehacker.com/psa-seve...
Seriously. What the fuck? Cgi-bin exploits in 2016?
Everybody hates ads, but in the end, it is ads that drove the value of companies like Google and Facebook to ridiculous heights (in fact it drove the last Internet bubble), and is now encouraging criminals to go to ridiculous lengths to serve us their ads instead of legitimate ones. What is wrong with this world?
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
If you are a web advertising company, why should you ever allow advertising clients to include arbitrary Javascript in their ads? Could you not provide a Javascript library of your own to do the legitimate things ad Javascript might do, and only allow advertising clients to use simple calls into your library?
I'm not knowledgeable about Javascript or web advertising - these are genuine questions, not rhetorical ones.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
which use a WebRTC request to a Mozilla STUN server to determine the user's local IP address
Yay, more garbage Web 3.0 anti-features! In Firefox, go to about:config and set these preferences:
media.peerconnection.enabled = false
media.peerconnection.video.enabled = false
media.peerconnection.turn.disable = true
media.peerconnection.use_document_iceservers = false
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
Most sites I simply don't engage if they require any scripting at all.
Before NoScript existed I just left scripting disabled at all times. Now I also use additional selective blocking, ie: all third party scripts, for the few sites that I deem important (banking, Google Maps) to use scripts on.
Because the attack is carried out via the user's browser, using strong router passwords or disabling the administration interface is not enough. The only way users can stay safe is if they update their router's firmware to the most recent versions, which most likely includes protection against the vulnerabilities used by this campaign.
Apparently anonymous reader didn't read the actual article, where it says:
The exploit packages contain vulnerabilities or list of hardcoded admin credentials that can allow the crooks to control the victim's local router.
Updating your firmware will not help with this. It is an issue of admin passwords being left at the default on 99.99% of routers. The admin password is used to change DNS settings on the router, which allows the attackers to redirect any traffic they want.
There is some kind of grand conspiracy of unimaginable stupidity going on with router vendors. I cannot for the life of me fathom how it is even possible to implement a consumer router so full of holes. You have to either not give a shit at all or be involved with intentional sabotage to explain the outcomes we are seeing.
Even if routers offered no local authentication whatsoever and just simply checked HTTP_REFERER first this crap would fail outright. What is it... 2...3..4..5.. lines of code max and whole categories of remote exploitation possibilities disappear overnight.
Unbelievable how f*****lame these exploits continue to be and how vendors are not in any way held accountable for not even trying.
You know a large number of commercial routers run on Linux, right? The Linux kernel isn't some magic sauce that makes you immune to hacking. On the contrary, we see flaws in programs that run on Linux all the time, these being one of them. An exploit like this can work on anything, it isn't limited just to prepackaged routers.
So what you mean is get an x64 system and run a Linux distro, with some built in tools for configuring routing. Ok... So long as it doesn't have any bugs they can exploit or check for, you are fine. If it does, well then you are back to having to update... if an update is available. A lot of the router-type Linux distros aren't very well maintained. Smoothwall, the one I hear the most crowing about, had its last release in 2014.
If you were going to point to something freely available, BSD would probably be a better bet in the form of PFSense as it is actually maintained and supported pretty well. Of course the fact that it runs on BSD is incidental to its security, it is (as best we know) secure because it has competent programmers who maintain it regularly.
However the real problem is that for many people, this is just not affordable. When you try and do all your routing and filtering in software on an x64 chip, you find you need a lot of power to push traffic. The CPUs aren't designed with routing in mind so they aren't super fast at it. PFSense needs about a 2.4GHz 4 core atom to push a gigabit of traffic, and then only if the ruleset is reasonably simple. That's about $550 for an appliance from Netgate that can do that, and that is with no wireless. Well for $180 a Netgear R7000 will push a gig of traffic no issue, and comes with a 3x3 802.11ac radio that does 2.4 and 5ghz at the same time. Likewise an EdgeRouter Lite gets a gig and is wired only for $100. They pull that off by having chips with dedicated routing logic on board.
For normal users it also needs to be easy. A suggestion of "Assemble a computer from parts, load Linux, configure routing in text files and you are good," is totally unreasonable. Even something like buying an appliance and loading code on to it from a cold state is out of reach for most people. They need a ready-made solution.