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Millions of IoT devices have already been compromised and abused for distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and millions more are affected by critical vulnerabilities that make them an easy target for malicious actors.
While in many cases attackers hack IoT devices and leverage them to conduct attacks directly, researchers at Akamai have come across a different type of mass attack in which the compromised systems are used as proxies that route malicious traffic.
These attacks, dubbed by Akamai SSHowDowN Proxy attacks, have abused vulnerable CCTV, NVR, DVR, networking, storage and satellite antenna equipment to conduct HTTP-based credential stuffing campaigns. The breached devices are also used as an entry point to the internal networks that house them.
Read more at SecurityWeek.com
(Score: 4, Informative) by stormwyrm on Friday October 14 2016, @08:04AM
The attack references CVE-2004-1653 [mitre.org], which states: "The default configuration for OpenSSH enables AllowTcpForwarding, which could allow remote authenticated users to perform a port bounce, when configured with an anonymous access program such as AnonCVS." (emphasis added) The man page sshd_config(5) says the following about AllowTcpForwarding:
So, to begin with, you already have to have authenticated access on the compromised host to use this attack. CVE-2004-1653 was first observed with anonymous CVS systems where an anonymous account normally used to access CVS code repositories could be exploited to do port forwarding. You get access, but since the anonymous account doesn't have a usable shell, you can't log in, but if port forwarding is enabled, you could use the anonymous connection to make connections to other systems as though you were the CVS server. It isn't exactly clear from TFA (Akamai [akamai.com] [PDF] has more detail) but are they trying to say that you can access these default administrator accounts via SSH but they won't give you a shell, same as with an AnonCVS server, but one can abuse the account to do port forwarding. The main problem then, is that no one ever bothered to change the default administrator password. If you don't do that, then well, you're just asking to be exploited in one way or another.
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Fnord666 on Friday October 14 2016, @02:58PM
The main problem then, is that no one ever bothered to change the default administrator password. If you don't do that, then well, you're just asking to be exploited in one way or another.
The real issue is that these devices are shipped with default username and password combinations that the end user cannot change!
The problem is that many vendors ship their products with insecure default settings and users often don’t have the possibility to make configuration changes that would prevent attacks.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday October 14 2016, @08:33PM
It seems to me that the real issue is the very existence of a default administrator.
If there has to be a default, make it unique, with a printed sticker on the device. Yeah, I know, that has to be integrated into the assembly process.
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