Netgear Hides Router Backdoor Instead of Fixing It

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in security on (#3J8)
story imageA very recent firmware analysis from the reverse engineer Eloi Vanderbeken shows that NETGEAR didn't fix the backdoor on port 32764 but instead implemented a knocking feature that is now required to unlock the service.

Summary from the slides: The knocking feature is initiated when a "packet type == 0x201" arrived at "ft_tool" that listens to the Ethernet packets. It only works with EtherType 0x8888 and the payload has to be "45d1bb339b07a6618b2114dbc0d7783e" which is the MD5-hash of the model number DGN1000. If such a packet arrives, the backdoor service /usr/bin/scfgmgr f- is launched.

Ars Technica reports :
The nature of the change, which leverages the same code as was used in the old firmware to provide administrative access over the concealed port, suggests that the backdoor is an intentional feature of the firmware and not just a mistake made in coding. "It's DELIBERATE," Vanderbecken asserted in his presentation.

(Cross posted on Soylentnews)

Re: Okay (Score: 3, Informative)

by omoc@pipedot.org on 2014-04-23 17:00 (#15F)

Well, sadly most Linux distributions tend to *not activate* some exploit mitigation. I don't know about the Linux router firmwares but last time I checked they even used some old kernel versions that didn't even had some of these mitigations. Personally I use an OpenBSD on an old ALIX board for a long time. Too bad pfsense is based on FreeBSD instead of OpenBSD, otherwise it would be an ideal candidate.

For hardware, I would recommend either the ALIX boards http://www.pcengines.ch/ (there is a new APU model) or Mikrotik routerboards http://routerboard.com/
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