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Hidden Backdoor Discovered In Chinese IoT Devices (techradar.com)
"A backdoor has been found in devices made by a Chinese tech firm specializing in VoIP products," reports TechRadar. An anonymous reader quotes their article:
Security outfit Trustwave made the discovery of a hidden backdoor in DblTek's devices which was apparently put there to allow the manufacturer access to said hardware -- but of course, it's also open to being exploited by other malicious parties. The backdoor is in the Telnet admin interface of DblTek-branded devices, and potentially allows an attacker to remotely open a shell with root privileges on the target device.
What's perhaps even more worrying is that when Trustwave contacted DblTek regarding the backdoor last autumn -- multiple times -- patched firmware was eventually released at the end of December. However, rather than removing the flaw, the vendor simply made it more difficult to access and exploit. And further correspondence with the Chinese company has apparently fallen on deaf ears.
The firmware with the hole "is present on almost every GSM-to-VoIP device which DblTek makes," and Trustwave "found hundreds of these devices on the net, and many other brands which use the same firmware, so are equally open to exploit."
What's perhaps even more worrying is that when Trustwave contacted DblTek regarding the backdoor last autumn -- multiple times -- patched firmware was eventually released at the end of December. However, rather than removing the flaw, the vendor simply made it more difficult to access and exploit. And further correspondence with the Chinese company has apparently fallen on deaf ears.
The firmware with the hole "is present on almost every GSM-to-VoIP device which DblTek makes," and Trustwave "found hundreds of these devices on the net, and many other brands which use the same firmware, so are equally open to exploit."
I'm so worn down by the number of news items about (yet another) shitty Chinese device having some a backdoor/malware/shitty or non existent security that I just assume that every device made in China has these flaws, we just haven't yet heard of them in the wild.
What would be more shocking to me is a news story about a Chinese device that has been security audited and found to be secure. When that day comes I will be truly suprised.
FRom Snowden
http://www.infoworld.com/article/2608141/internet-privacy/snowden--the-nsa-planted-backdoors-in-cisco-products.html
Device pings manufacturer's server every hour or so. Translation remains active for inbound connection, even with stateful firewall.
You really have to segregate everything to stay protected, and block or proxy outbound connections for IoT devices.
It gets harder when all the traffic is on 443.
From reading the article (yes - I know - and no I'm not new here) it's nasty piece of telephony hardware and more like a router than anything else. I know it's a current meme to thrash IoT as a platform but this is not a case of a programmer taking shortcuts on a feature constrained device, but rather a programmer or designer who is just dumb. This has been a problem long before the IoT ever came around.