It is generally accepted in IT that the weakest link in the security chain is the fallible and frequently careless human.
But a close second, many experts say, is the router – the
device that connects people to the Web, sometimes called “the backbone
of the Internet” – which is dangerously vulnerable to skilled hackers.
Those experts have been issuing alarms for some time, but they say that, so far, things have not changed much.[ ALSO ON CSO: Cisco warns customers about attacks installing rogue firmware on networking gear ]
Dan Geer,
chief information security officer at the venture capital firm In-Q-Tel
and an adviser to U.S. intelligence agencies, speaking to a conference in
Cambridge, Mass., more than a year ago, said most routers are almost
comically insecure, given that they have, “drivers and operating systems
amounting to snapshots of the state of Linux, plus the lowest-end
commodity chips extant at the time of the router’s design.”
The only way to fix the problem, he said, would be to, “unplug all
the devices, throw them in the dumpster and install all new ones.”
And that wouldn’t fix it either, because the new ones are,
“likely to have the same vulnerability spectrum that made this possible
in the first place,” he said.
Jim Gettys, a systems architect, said last
year that he had inventoried the age of the packages inside a number of
routers, “and they are three to four years old on Day One. And without
an update stream, you start with existing vulnerabilities, and it just
gets worse from there.”
In an interview this past week, Gettys said he had, “seen little change in the market.”
Bruce Schneier, encryption guru and CTO at Resilient Systems, wrote more than a year ago in a blog post that,
“the computers in our routers and modems are much more powerful than
the PCs of the mid-1990s,” and warned that if security vulnerabilities
in them are not fixed soon, “we're in for a security disaster, as
hackers figure out that it's easier to hack routers than computers.”
Such security holes can allow hackers to access files,
install malware on a network or use a victim’s security cameras to spy
on him, without needing access to the computer hardware.
In a more recent interview with
Network World this past April, Schneier said basically the same thing
Geer had said a year earlier: “Do you know the way you patch your home
router? You throw it away and buy a new one. And that is going to be a
freakin' disaster … Low cost, binary blobs, no one knows how they work,
there's no one to update them, lots of vulnerabilities, and we're just
stuck with it.”
And even if updates are available, they are too difficult to install
for the average user, said Lawrence Munro, director at Trustwave.“The key issue is that upgrading is almost always a manual process that is likely beyond the skill level of a home-user,” he said, “and patches aren’t available quickly in many cases.”
Indeed, last December, US-CERT, part of the Department of Homeland Security, warned broadband
router manufacturers about a vulnerability called “Misfortune Cookie”
that been patched more than 10 years ago, but was still present on many
deployed devices.
Researchers at Check Point’s malware and vulnerability group, who came up with the name, noted that,
“if your gateway device is vulnerable, then any device connected to
your network – including computers, phones, tablets, printers, security
cameras, refrigerators, toasters or any other networked device in your
home or office network – may have increased risk of compromise.”
And Mark Stanislav, senior security consultant at Rapid7, noted this week that in a contest at
last year’s Def Con, hackers were able to demonstrate 15 zero-day
vulnerabilities in more than a half-dozen of the most common Small
Office/Home Office (SOHO) routers, including models from Asus, Netgear,
DLink, Belkin, Linksys, Actiontec and Trendnet.
Not surprisingly, the contest was titled, “SOHOpelessly Broken.”
If it really is this bad, however, it would seem there would
be more stories about disastrous takeovers of networks. Yet while
mainstream media regularly report on major hacks, there are few, if any,
headlines about router compromises.
“It’s a much more layered and nuanced story than, ‘Company X was hacked, your data is now a risk.’”
Robert Siciliano, online safety expert for Intel Security,
agreed. “If the flaw is too complicated for mass media to break down for
the general public, they avoid discussing it,” he said.
Munro agreed, but said it is also because the media don’t find it that exciting – at least yet. Remotely hacking a car and causing it to crash catches public attention much more than explaining how a router is vulnerable.[ ALSO ON CSO: SDN switches aren't hard to compromise, researcher says ]
Gettys said he thinks it is because, “it hasn't yet hurt in the pocket book at sufficient scale in the U.S.,” but warns that the hurt is coming.
“People have not realized just how insecure these devices
are, or what mischief this can cause for the customers and others – they
are being increasingly used as part of botnets to attack others,” he
said.
If there is any promising news to
report, it is that there seems to be a growing awareness among
developers and manufacturers that there is a problem.
“IoT (Internet of Things)
devices in general are starting to focus more on easy firmware updates –
automated processes that don't require user intervention, and overall
longevity of hardware updates,” Stanislav said.
“This will, ideally, trickle down into the SOHO router
market eventually. As design patterns and technical challenges are
overcome, disseminating updates quickly will become easier for
manufacturers.”
Gettys said he is hearing behind the scenes that there may
be some improvements, “in not-yet-announced products; but I leave that
to the manufacturers and service providers announcements to come.
“But even with these glimmers of hope, I'm discouraged, as
the economic foundation of the problem has not changed,” he said, adding
that changes in the law making the manufacturers of routers liable for
security breaches is the only solution.
“The idea that someone can ship a product and not have any
liability for even basic maintenance and upgrade of the software it
contains for its expected lifetime must change,” he said. Without it,
“new entrants who do a better job won't see a reward, and will have
higher costs”
Stanislav said he has seen some vendors, “take a more
cloud-based approach, where updates are an ongoing process that require
less user intervention. But that can create new problems, especially if
the user is unaware of the firmware being updated.
“We saw some outrage in
2012 for this type of auto-upgraded firmware from Linksys. This is a
balancing act that vendors are still figuring out how to weigh,” he
said.
Until major improvements occur, experts collectively
recommend a number of steps consumers can take that won’t solve the
problem entirely, but will make them less of a target than the average
user:
- Change the default password to one that is unique, long and complex.
- If it is impossible to upgrade your router, buy a new one that does allow it. According to Munro, “the open-source community has offered alternatives for users by creating projects such as OpenWRT and Tomato, which provide open-source firmware to replace the vendor’s on common hardware platforms.” But, implementing them, “requires a reasonable level of IT skill,” he said.
- Make sure that uPnP (Universal Plug and Play) is off.
- Read the manual, and turn off or disable other features you may not need.
- If your Internet service provider offers a combined router/modem, this could pass some of the responsibility for hardware updates onto it.
- If you have the expertise, install OpenWRT. “But that’s not something grandma and grandpa will be capable of,” Gettys said.
This story, "Your router: Gateway for hackers" was originally published by
CSO.
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